Warren Entsch (Leichhardt, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1) notes that:

(a) 24 March 2021 is World Tuberculosis (TB) Day, a day to commemorate precious lives lost and recognise the serious impacts COVID-19 is having on TB services globally;

(b) TB remains one of the world's deadliest airborne infectious diseases, killing more than 4,000 people every day, among them 700 children, and close to 15 million people in the last decade;

(c) COVID-19 is exacerbating inequalities, making it difficult to reach people with life-saving TB prevention and treatment;

(d) five to eight years of global progress in the fight against TB is likely to be lost due to disruption of services resulting from COVID-19—1.4 million more people are likely to die from TB in the next five years if urgent action is not taken;

(e) Australia committed to the targets agreed in the Political Declaration of the United Nations High Level Meeting (UNHLM) on TB in 2018; and

(f) the UN Secretary-General's 2020 report found that progress in meeting the UNHLM targets on TB is far too slow to meet the 2022 deadline;

(2) acknowledges that the:

(a) Government's series of announcements of $1.1 billion to support global and regional COVID-19 response and recovery will save millions of lives;

(b) Government pledge of $242 million to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (Global Fund) will save millions of lives;

(c) investment of $13.3 million from the Government in 2019 will support antimicrobial resistance and drug-resistant TB research in Pacific island countries;

(d) Government's investment in TB research and development has resulted in the development of a new, 6 months, all-oral TB drug therapy thereby reducing the previous 18-month long treatment for drug resistant TB that consisted of multiple injections and thousands of pills; and

(e) Government's investments in multilateral agencies such as the Global Fund has supported countries' responses to the COVID-19 crisis; and

(3) calls on the Government to increase:

(a) our TB investment in the Asia Pacific region to sustain routine TB services and safeguard the progress made so far; and

(b) investment in TB research and development to meet the commitments made by Australia at the 2018 UHLM on TB.

As the world battles with the COVID-19 pandemic, a silent and unspoken pandemic called tuberculosis continues to rage, killing more than 1.5 million people in 2019 alone, taking total TB deaths to more than 15 million in the last decade. In many countries, the COVID-19 pandemic is exacerbating inequalities and making it even harder to reach people with lifesaving TB prevention and treatment. According to the Stop TB Partnership, this could cause an additional 1.4 million deaths in the next five years if urgent action isn't taken. TB is both preventable and treatable, but the lack of resources is hampering access to the currently available treatments and the development of more effective treatments, diagnostics and vaccines. Global and Australian investments in TB are saving lives. For the first time in 40 years, we have new drugs for the multi-drug-resistant TB that can reduce treatment time from 18 months to six months, which is fantastic, but there's still a lot more that we need to do. We need faster diagnostic tools, shorter treatment regimes, and, most importantly, a more effective TB vaccine. Over the last 12 months, the world has come together to tackle COVID-19. In record time, we've developed effective vaccines, diagnostics and, to a limited extent, treatments. With global collaboration, political leadership and funding commitments, it is possible. We need a similar response to TB.

Incredibly, this year marks the 100th anniversary of the introduction of the current TB vaccine, the BCG vaccine, highlighting the contrast in innovation rates to combat COVID-19 compared to other existing deadly diseases. Countries in our Asia-Pacific region have some of the highest rates of TB infections in the world and account for nearly half of all the cases of drug-resist TB and TB deaths worldwide. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, some of those countries are in the top 10 travel destinations for Australians and are major trading partners for Australia. TB has no respect for national borders. The reality is that, with modern travel, TB can be transmitted anywhere in the world in fewer than 24 hours. The distance between our outer Torres Strait islands and the coastal villages of the Western Province of Papua New Guinea, on a boundary to the northern part of my electorate, is fewer than four kilometres. The World Health Organization estimates there are roughly 38,000 TB cases every year in Papua New Guinea, but only 30,000 people are diagnosed for treatment, meaning that about 8,000 are either undiagnosed or unreported. I suggest that those numbers could be even significantly higher.

TB is not a thing of the past or a problem elsewhere. It's very much a problem here and now in Australia. In fact, we had two Border Force officers in the last week or so diagnosed with TB from working up in the Torres Strait area, which is of concern. My own mother was afflicted with TB, and I know the profound impact it had on my family. Although the TB incidence rate in Australian-born cases is low, it's up to seven times higher in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. Also concerning is a latent TB infection and reservoir of the TB epidemic. People with latent TB do not have symptoms and cannot infect others but can become ill and infectious when their immunity drops. There are an estimated one million latent TB infections, four per cent of our population, in Australia.

The world TB clock is ticking and reminds us of the precious time we are losing and of the promises made to the United Nations high-level meeting on tuberculosis in September 2018, where countries, including Australia, pledged their support to end the TB epidemic. To mark the day, on 24 March, Results Australia is partnering with more than 40 local governments to light up red the town halls and public buildings, an act of solidarity for 1.5 million people who die from TB each year. A few hundred metres from us, Old Parliament House will be lit up to remind people in Canberra that TB is a current issue, and I'm certainly working on a site in my home town in Cairns.

In many countries, including Australia, parliamentarians have shown cross-party support for the issue because we all agree that no-one should die of TB this century. It is a disease that has been neglected for too long. In 2021 it is critical for Australia to lead the fight against TB in the Asia-Pacific region, especially in the backdrop of COVID. (Time expired)

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