Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Manufacturing) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased follow the member for Fowler in this discussion. As the motion quite rightly points out, and as other speakers have pointed out, there are some 75,000 people across Australia currently who suffer from Crohn's disease, ulcerative colitis or inflammatory bowel disease of some sort or another. More concerning is the fact that, by the year 2022, that figure is projected to rise to some 100,000. I also note that there have been a couple of reports as to the cost of this disease to society. A PricewaterhouseCoopers report suggested that productivity losses alone are worth $380 million, and there is an additional $2.7 billion of costs to Australian society that arise from inflammatory bowel disease. I also note that a few years ago—I think it was in 2005—there was an Access Economics report which also put the direct cost at something like $500 million, at a time when it was only an estimated 60,000 Australians who suffered from the illness, but it also put the total costs, in one form or another, as perhaps running into the billions of dollars for Australian society as a whole.

I refer to the issue of cost for this reason. It is important to understand that this illness is costing Australia a considerable amount of funds, and that is why, in turn, it is important to look at what we can do to try to reduce the incidence of it or to better manage it, and that in turn would suggest that we need to not only spend more money in the direct service of health support systems but also into research.

I am particularly concerned that many of the sufferers of IBD are young people. In fact, it is sometimes in their teenage years that people are diagnosed with this illness. That, in turn, inhibits their ability to get a proper education. When you have this kind of illness, the chances are that either you absent yourself from school on many occasions because you feel embarrassed to go to school, it being one of those illnesses that is hard to manage, or you lose your ability to focus on your education, which, again, must inevitably have an impact on those young people. It is that loss that, to me, we should never forget. It means that young people with all sorts of potential perhaps never reach their potential because they simply cannot apply themselves to their education.

The costs that I refer to include lost earnings, absenteeism in the workplace, premature death, the loss of tax revenue to government as a result of people not being in work or not attending work as often as they might, and even the carer costs for people who need more intensive care as a result of these conditions. Of course, there are also the psychological costs, because there is no doubt that, when a person has a chronic disease of one kind or another, inevitably they need counselling and psychological treatment. It would be debilitating and demoralising, and, in the end, people become very desperate. So any kind of support we can give them is important. I note that, whilst there are some medications available, there is no cure for the illnesses. Two-thirds to three-quarters of Crohn's disease sufferers ultimately end up having some kind of surgery at some point in their lives. About one-third of ulcerative colitis patients also end up requiring surgery at some point in their lives.

Last year, there was an interim Australian standards quality of care program guideline released by Crohn's and Colitis Australia which puts together a framework for how we can better manage people who suffer from these illnesses. The framework talks about high-quality clinical care, locally delivered services, individually structured programs, improved patient support and education, better data collection and use, and nutrition and counselling advice. The bottom line is that we cannot cure these diseases, but at least we can offer a whole range of services which help patients better manage the conditions that they have. Among the health services that these people access are X-rays, pathology services, endoscopies, colonoscopies, ultrasound, diagnostic imaging and all of the medications that they need to take. The reality is that, in comparison with other illnesses, we do not spend anywhere near as much money on Crohn's and colitis illnesses as we should be spending. We need to spend it in direct support and in more research so that we can ultimately create a better quality of life for sufferers.

Debate adjourned.

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