Lisa Singh (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Attorney General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to report on the inaugural meeting of the Asia Pacific TB Caucus that I attended in Sydney recently. The caucus, convened by Melissa Parke and Warren Entsch, is a gathering of regional parliamentarians who have vowed to take action, both collectively and individually, to drive progress against tuberculosis. We will work with national parliaments and regional and global organisations to build support for necessary policies and mobilise resources to more effectively tackle the disease. The Asia Pacific TB Caucus was set up under the aegis of the Global TB Caucus, which was established by Nick Herbert MP, the co-chair of the UK All-Party Parliamentary Group on Global TB, and Jose Luis Castro, the executive director of the International Union Against Tuberculosis and Lung Disease, in Barcelona 2014. The Barcelona Declaration on Tuberculosis of the caucus committed its signatories—parliamentarians and political leaders spanning five continents—to work for sustained action and significant investment in the fight against TB. The Asia Pacific TB Caucus is the first parliamentary network of its type in the region.

I attended the meeting along with my Labor colleagues Matt Thistlethwaite and Sharon Claydon, as well as Liberal MPs Dr Andrew Southcott and Warren Entsch, the chair of the meeting. I want to applaud the determination of RESULTS International and RESULTS Australia, with whom I have engaged very closely on other issues related to their efforts to end poverty, for working so hard to establish this caucus and for providing its secretariat.

I also want to recognise and express my deep gratitude to the wonderful Eloisa 'Louie' Zepeda from the Philippines, a former architect who lost her sight to drug-resistant tuberculosis and who is now trying to save the lives of others by sharing her story and inspiring parliamentarians like myself to keep increasing the pressure on TB. I thank Louie for moving and motivating me and my colleagues in this caucus. And she needs to, because every year approximately 100 million people globally are infected with TB, eight million develop active or infectious TB and two million die from the disease.

It is appropriate that parliamentarians from the Asia-Pacific have formed this network because some 60 per cent of the world's TB cases occur in the Asia-Pacific region, where nearly five million people fall ill each year. TB continues to be widespread and deadly in many Asia-Pacific countries, including Timor Leste, Cambodia, Myanmar, Papua New Guinea, Kiribati and the Marshall Islands.

Target 6.C of the Millennium Development Goals aimed to halt and begin to reverse the incidence of TB by the end of this year. Due to some remarkable achievements over the past decade, this target is on track. Since 2000, TB treatment has saved nearly 37 million lives, but prevalence and mortality rates are falling very slowly. The UN is following up on this slow success with the ambitious but necessary Sustainable Development Goal 3.3 to end the epidemic of TB by 2030. However, at current rates, the TB epidemic will be controlled by 2180 at the earliest.

Besides the human cost, TB in general and drug-resistant TB in particular place an extraordinary economic burden on communities and trap people in poverty. It is estimated that TB will rob the world's poorest countries of an estimated $1 trillion to $3 trillion over the next 10 years. The World Bank estimates that the loss of productivity attributable to TB is four to seven per cent of some countries' GDP. Without swift action, drug-resistant TB will claim the lives of an additional 40 million people in our region over the next 35 years and significantly drive down economic growth. Five per cent of global TB cases are actually drug resistant. Failure to specifically address drug-resistant TB will result in major long-term human and economic costs and, ultimately, may pose a major threat to regional development and security.

Despite the growing need, chronic underinvestment in TB research and development means that the pipeline for new drugs is very sparse, with few new treatments in development. As has been proven by other diseases such as smallpox and polio, prevention through vaccination would be the most cost-effective tool for ending TB as an epidemic. It is feasible to develop an effective TB vaccine in the next decade. As recently as 10 years ago, only one new TB vaccine candidate was in clinical trials. Today, 15 potential vaccines are in the pipeline. Donors such as Australia need to renew and sustain research and development support if we are to eliminate TB as a global epidemic by 2030. A new vaccine could be available within 10 years if appropriate research and development is supported.

Under Labor, Australia's contribution to official development assistance grew with every budget. In 2006-07 the Australian government invested $2.9 billion, and by 2013-14 that amount had almost doubled to $5.7 billion. In 2013 alone, a commitment by the former Labor government saw Australia give $100 million to the global fund to fight tuberculosis—the largest single-year contribution our country has ever made. The Abbott government needs to ensure Australia is a strong contributor to the global fund.

The impact of an additional contribution by Australia to the global fund could be multiplied by up to 10 times in the Asia-Pacific region. This is because TB is the leading killer of people living with HIV, causing one in five HIV-related deaths. More recently, the association between TB and diabetes has come into focus, and the TB-diabetes combination is particularly relevant for our Asia-Pacific region. Of the 10 countries with the highest prevalence of diabetes globally, seven are in the Pacific. In these countries between one-quarter and one-third of adults have diabetes. A high proportion of TB patients also have diabetes, many with uncontrolled diabetes, which makes treating TB more difficult.

From Australia's perspective, the health strategy for the aid program released in June emphasises support for strengthening the health systems of Asia-Pacific countries. An important part of our health-system strengthening is to ensure that services can cater to people with multiple conditions which require care and treatment. Unfortunately, Prime Minister Abbott's severe cuts to international aid threaten to compromise the important work that the global fund is trying to achieve in fighting TB in developing countries, including some of Australia's nearest neighbours such as Papua New Guinea. It is so critical that we as a nation bolster our support in the fight against TB and lead the charge wherever possible. This is a disease that affects us all. This is a disease that is affecting some of our nearest neighbours, including Timor Leste and Papua New Guinea. It is up to us as a wealthy nation to support the global fund in fighting this very severe disease that causes so many deaths and so much suffering for our nearest neighbours each year. We cannot do that by cutting our aid budget. We have to do that by investing in research and development to find a new vaccine, hopefully before that 2030 date, and we will only do that if the Abbott government ensures that its aid budget is lifted from the poor position that it currently finds itself in, coming out of our last budget and the budget before that.

My message tonight is to urge the Abbott government to provide the necessary funding to the Global Fund to ensure that our nearest neighbours—those in the Asia-Pacific affected by TB, people like Louie—have a chance in life to be free of TB, just like so many have been cured of polio and smallpox in the past. Let's invest in the Global Fund, invest in research and development, find a vaccine for TB and get rid of this epidemic by 2030.