John Alexander (Bennelong, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Higgins for bringing forward this motion on the Global Polio Eradication Initiative. I have spoken a few times lately on medical treatments that are bringing an end to debilitating conditions. It might be a COVID thing with this endlessly ongoing disease, but it's nice to look around and see that we aren't victims to diseases and we have some agency against them. It takes time and effort, but eventually, with enough people focusing on one condition, we can consign it to the history books.

Polio is one such story. Less than 100 years ago it was so prevalent that the president of the most powerful industrialised country in the world could have it. In prewar generations, polio was rife in Australia, with thousands of children suffering. Even when I was at school, one of my mates, Barry Mulligan, had polio and could only get around with the help of calipers and crutches. But while it was endemic in the thirties, in Australia our final case of polio was caught in 1972. Since then it has hardly been visible.

Australia was declared polio free in 2000, at the same time as the whole of the western Pacific. The western Pacific point is important. As a rich country, we often have health outcomes that are better than the poorer countries around us, but eradicating polio is not about eradicating it in rich countries; it is about ensuring that it is consigned to history everywhere. That Australia was declared polio free at the same time as the western Pacific is very important. This excellent news has been continued across the world. As this motion says, in August 2020 the entire African continent was declared polio free and, around the world, polio is 99 per cent eradicated.

How have we got there? Together. The Global Polio Eradication Initiative has brought together organisations like Rotary International, the World Health Organization and the United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund as well as the private sector to bring polio to heel. When it started, there were more than 350,000 cases of polio annually. Each of these cases resulted in a child being paralysed or killed. The program has been incredibly successful.

The other key ingredient has been vaccination. The polio vaccine has been one of the more efficient vaccines, proving to be easily distributed and highly effective. The National Immunisation Program in Australia still operates a polio vaccine for newborns and infants, and, by this method, we will keep Australia free of this terrible condition. Just as we talk of smallpox being eradicated by a vaccine, soon this narrative may be taken over by the polio shot.

But we are not fully there yet. Polio continues to spread in two countries: Pakistan and Afghanistan. Both of these countries have challenging health networks and very isolated, if not autonomous, regions. Lawlessness is as endemic as polio, and this makes treatment difficult. There have only been two cases this year, one in Pakistan and one in Afghanistan. However, 2021 has not been a good year for health reporting in either jurisdiction, and it is safe to assume that polio remains widespread, with continuing transmission throughout the community in these countries.

Furthermore, COVID restrictions have caused massive disruptions to the eradication goals compared to 2019. In 2020, there were reports of increasing cases of circulating vaccine-derived polio virus globally and continued reports of wild polio virus cases in endemic countries. Polio vaccines were briefly stopped at the beginning of the pandemic as health care was diverted to more pressing areas. However, that has since been reinstated. So, although we don't know the extent of the COVID impacts, it is likely that there is underreporting of cases globally, particularly in resource-poor settings.

That said, ultimately, polio is a good story. Hundreds of thousands of children who would have suffered from polio will now live full lives, thanks to modern medicine and the efforts of the international community. There is still more to do in a small number of countries, but we have the tools and the willpower to make this happen. Then, soon, the world will be able to look back at polio, knowing that we will never have to fear it again.

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