Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Health) Share this | Hansard source

I am delighted to second this motion moved by the Member for Ryan. Of course, 24 March being World Tuberculosis Day, it is important that we reflect both on the history and on the current policy settings in relation to tuberculosis. At the beginning of the 20th century, tuberculosis was the leading cause of mortality for females in Australia and second leading cause for men. TB claimed thousands of lives in this country every year and accounted for around eight or nine per cent of all deaths. For many who contracted the disease, TB was a long, slow death sentence, from what was referred to unscientifically but accurately as 'consumption.' Those who could afford it, both here and abroad, would often try to beat the disease by fleeing to healthier locations like mountains and the seaside to take the cure and give themselves a better chance of survival. The fine sanatorium buildings that exist to this day in areas like the Blue Mountains or Dandenongs are reminders of a time when TB was prevalent, public health campaigns urged people not to spit in the street, and the only response was isolation, rest and diet.

Antibiotics and improvement in living standards and intensive-screening campaigns, especially in the wake of World War II, all but eradicated the disease here. At the end of that century, not a single fatality was recorded in Australia in 2000. Sadly, unlike other diseases such as smallpox and polio, Australia's success has not been matched by similar outcomes in the rest of the world, and tuberculosis remains in many countries one of the leading causes of death. While there have been significant improvements, according to the World Health Organization, tuberculosis is second only to HIV-AIDS as the greatest killer worldwide due to a single infectious agent, and it is very sad also to note that for many HIV-positive people, because HIV weakens the immune system, TB is a lethal combination for these patients.

In 2013, nine million people fell ill with TB and 1.5 million people died from the disease. Over 95 per cent of these deaths occurred in low- and middle-income countries. Australia continues to record one of the lowest notification rates of tuberculosis, but there are worrying signs that we are once more at risk because of the failure to eliminate the disease overseas and its mutation into a new, multidrug resistant strain.

In October last year, Queensland Health confirmed the first death of an Australian citizen from complications related to this multidrug resistant tuberculosis. The 32-year-old Torres Strait Islander woman died after being admitted to hospital six days earlier and had what was described as a close connection with another Torres Strait Islander woman, who died from MDR TB at the Cairns Hospital in April 2013. The woman was known to travel between Cairns, the Torres Strait and Papua New Guinea. In many ways, sadly, this was inevitable because Papua New Guinea, our nearest neighbour, with intense people-to-people contact, especially across Torres Strait to Queensland, has the highest rate of TB infections in the Pacific, with an estimated 39,000 cases, and 25,000 new infections each year.

TB is a preventable and treatable disease. But PNG is a poor nation that does not enjoy the health standards that we take for granted here. It shows why it is not just in Australia's interest as a good global citizen to continue the fight against TB, but why with even the best health system in the world we cannot be immune to the spread of this disease. More than 85 per cent of notified cases detected here occurred in the overseas-born population, and the current epidemiology of TB in Australia is largely a direct result of the global TB situation. Short of closing all of our borders and placing all Australians who travel overseas in isolation on their return, the only way we can protect ourselves against TB, as we did from smallpox and as we are close to achieving with polio, is to eliminate the disease all over the world.

That is why today, in this motion, we are committing to the WHO End TB Strategy, endorsed by all member states at the 2014 World Health Assembly, to end the TB epidemic by 2035. In our region, we resolve to combat TB by working with our partner countries to build strong and sustainable health systems. As Australia's experience has shown, a strong public health system and a determined effort can beat TB. We also declare our strong support for ongoing funding of health and medical research in Australia which is helping to bring new medicines, diagnostic tests and vaccines to the market, for TB and other neglected diseases. The development of new and simple affordable treatment tools for TB and multidrug-resistant TB is essential if the End TB Strategy goals are to be met. Let us hope that in the not-too-distant future we can look back on TB as a distant memory not just in Australia but across the globe. (Time expired)

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