Sharon Claydon (Newcastle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I too thank the member for Calwell, my colleague, for bringing this motion before the House today and during the important National Stroke Week. I do wish her very well in her deliberations as our new co-chair of the parliamentary group focused on stroke and heart disease. She will be a tremendous leader in that regard, I have no doubt.

Stroke is the third leading cause of death in Australia; every 10 minutes someone has a stroke. That is around 1,000 strokes a week and 50,000 a year. Stroke kills more women, as we have heard, than breast cancer and more men than prostate cancer. It affects young and old, men and women. Remarkably, in 2012, the total financial costs of stroke in Australia were estimated to be $5 billion. This is set to grow exponentially in the coming years, as there are predicted to be 709,000 people living with the effects of stroke by 2032.

This week is National Stroke Week, and the National Stroke Foundation is asking Australians, amongst other things, to better understand the impact that time has on stroke and stroke recovery. Stroke attacks the brain at an alarming rate. Just one minute can equate to 1.9 million brain cells lost, so a speedy reaction influences not only the treatment available to a person having a stroke but also their recovery.

I want to use this opportunity to speak of an often invisible aspect of the disease, and that is rehabilitation and assistance services for stroke survivors and their carers. Once a death sentence, in a span of just a generation stroke has gone from being a fatal event to being a treatable disease. It is now a disease of chronic disability, with 65 per cent of the 440,000 stroke survivors in Australia needing assistance to carry out daily living activities. Yet a staggering 80 per cent of those survivors have unmet needs. Family members and carers of people who have suffered a stroke in Newcastle tell me that there are significant gaps in transitional care, intensive rehabilitation services and adequate support services, particularly for those wishing to remain living at home post stroke.

I recently spoke to a constituent of mine who relayed to me the difficulty that she and her sister had in accessing services and support for their mother. Their mother, Mary, is a strong and fiercely independent woman. However, after she suffered a stroke this independence was lost overnight. Not surprisingly, Mary's family were determined to provide her with every opportunity possible to regain her independence and dignity. Mary's daughters described to me in shocking detail the struggles they had to endure just to get their mother access to what most would consider the most basic of post-stroke rehabilitation. They were told their mother was too old and that rehabilitation was really only for minor stroke sufferers. It was also suggested that institutionalisation might be the easier option for the family—that they should not bother pursuing any sort of recovery. Thankfully the sisters refused to accept such low expectations of their mother's capacity for rehabilitation.

When they took Mary home they found that there was little support and, particularly, little access to those home-based rehabilitation services that they so much needed. The family said that at the time when they were most vulnerable and most in need there was not the financial support or assistance, help and guidance available. Undeterred, however, they continued their search and fight for optimum treatments—often at great personal and emotional cost. They self-funded the physio and speech therapy that their mother required. Their sacrifices yielded profound results for Mary. She has made remarkable strides towards recovery. She is talking again, beginning to walk on her own and undertaking a whole range of activities in the house, including personal care. Her quality of life is improving every day.

I tell this story to argue for a change in the way that we view stroke sufferers, because it is a treatable disease. I call on everybody, including the government, to redouble our efforts in terms of prevention, research and treatment, and to recommit ourselves to addressing the unmet needs of stroke survivors and their carers in Australia.

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