Sid Sidebottom (Braddon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

One of the foundation stones of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, which was established recently, was to make a difference by tackling head on three of the diseases that my colleague the member for Page quite rightly pointed out are called the three Ds. They condemn vast numbers of people to ill-health, discrimination and other human rights abuses, poverty and preventable early death. That is the sad thing about this: they are preventable. We, on our side of the economic ledger in the world, can do a hell of a lot more to help to combat these terrible preventable diseases.

TB kills someone approximately every 20 seconds. That is nearly 4,700 people every day or 1.8 million people alone, according to the latest estimates from the World Health Organisation. TB is second only to HIV-AIDS as the leading infectious killer of adults worldwide. It is among the three greatest causes of death in women aged 15 to 44 and is the leading infectious cause of death among people with HIV-AIDS. It is preventable. We can do something about it. We need to do something about it. On a global scale, although we are doing some things and there have been advances, we are not doing nearly enough.

Tuberculosis is global. The World Health Organisation estimates that two billion people—that is, one-third of the world’s population—are infected with TB. Mycobacterium tuberculosis is the official title of the bacillus that causes the disease. Mycobacterium TB’s unique cell wall, which has a waxy coating primarily composed of mycolic acids, allows the bacillus to lie dormant for many years. The body’s immune system may restrain the disease but it does not destroy it.

While some people with this latent infection will never develop active TB, particularly in more advanced countries—and, in a discriminatory way, it develops in males more than females—five to 10 per cent of carriers will become sick in their lifetime. So, effectively, if 9.4 million new cases of TB per year are diagnosed, how many are not diagnosed? It is very sad. Once active, TB attacks the respiratory system and other organs, destroying body tissue. The disease is contagious, spreading through the air by coughing, sneezing or even talking.

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