Judi Moylan (Pearce, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today in the national parliament we had a very important event. It was hosted by the Parliamentary Diabetes Support Group along with Diabetes Australia and it was to launch their new campaign ‘Turning diabetes around’. It outlined their vision for the future in awareness, prevention, detection, management and cure of diabetes. The fact is that, if we cannot turn this trend around—and we know that about 7.4 per cent of the Australian population has been diagnosed with diabetes; there are a lot more who have not been diagnosed—we will continue to see a lot of human pain and suffering.

The most heart-wrenching impact of the diabetes pandemic is the human cost of poor life quality, including pain and suffering and increased mortality. Diabetes is one of the most common causes of limb amputation. In fact, somebody loses a limb worldwide every 30 seconds as a result of the disease of diabetes and somebody loses their life every 10 seconds somewhere around the world because of diabetes. Some of the other serious complications include blindness, kidney failure, heart attack and stroke.

We were fortunate enough today to have Dr Gary Deed, the President of Diabetes Australia, outline Diabetes Australia’s plan for the future to turn diabetes around. We were also very fortunate to have present Ludde Ingvall, one of Australia’s leading yachtsmen, known perhaps most famously for bringing home the winning Nicorette in the three Sydney to Hobart races. Ludde has very generously offered himself as an ambassador to diabetes. At 50 he was diagnosed with type 2, and he talked today in this place about how his life changed and what he had to do to cope with that. We are fortunate to have people like Ludde Ingvall and others who are prepared to speak out and raise awareness on this particular matter.

I have just returned from New York, where I attended the Global Changing Diabetes Leadership Forum. It was really designed so that we could discuss ways in which we could better manage the diabetes pandemic. Bill Clinton, the former President of the United States, was keynote speaker. He said that, although his government did some things to acknowledge the pandemic of diabetes in the United States, he was really disappointed and wished deeply that he had spent more time looking at trend lines in relation to this matter instead of headlines.

To provide some perspective on the problem, diabetes is estimated to affect 246 million people worldwide. That number is expected to grow by 55 per cent, reaching 380 million by 2025. We are very fortunate in Australia because our government is strongly committed to diabetes, and our minister, the Hon. Tony Abbott, Minister for Health and Ageing, spoke on this at the launch today. We do have in government a national health priority so that we can implement policies to achieve prevention, early detection and early treatment. The government has provided $43 million for the National Integrated Diabetes Program and supports the National Diabetes Service Scheme, which in recent years has added insulin pump consumables to the NDSS, much to the relief of many diabetics around the country.

The Global Changing Diabetes Leadership Forum in New York was sponsored by Novo Nordisk, the international insulin supplier, and followed up on the recent historic resolution by the United Nations to designate 14 November as World Diabetes Day, to be observed each year and beginning in 2007. That a resolution was passed in the United Nations, strongly supported by Australia, demonstrates the concern that diabetes raises worldwide for a resolution to have been passed, strongly supported by Australia, in the United Nations.

The only other health issue that has been the subject of a UN resolution, of course, is AIDS. It gives members in this place some idea of the emphasis on, and the seriousness of, diabetes around the globe and the need for us to arrest the growth and implement policies that will make sure that we deal with the diabetes pandemic. Professor Silink, an Australian professor, is head of the International Diabetes Forum. He spoke in New York and he has been the one who has been very much behind pushing for this UN resolution. I acknowledge the work that he has done and the way in which he has made sure that this matter is raised globally.