Melissa Parke (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am sure there are some members who can recall the impact polio had on Australia. This debilitating disease swept through Australian communities during the 1930s to 1960s, causing widespread fear and panic. Schools were shut down, public spaces closed and families barricaded themselves in their homes to protect children against the rapid spread of this potentially fatal disease. Hospital wards filled with iron lungs and manufacturers struggled to keep up with demand for crutches as previously healthy children lost their mobility and were paralysed, all as a result of this incurable disease. I am told that there were as many as 40,000 cases of paralytic polio recorded in Australia during the epidemics, although the real numbers for polio infection could have been much higher. Now, thanks to decades of investment in vaccination programs, Australia and many other countries are polio free.

There have been many coordinated efforts against this disease over the years and I want to draw members' attention to another important collaboration happening in New York next week, one the government is proud to support. It is a demonstration of the incredible things which are possible when citizens in the global community work together. Next week, the Prime Minister will address fellow leaders at a special event convened by the UN Secretary-General to spark renewed commitment to ending polio within the international community. This is yet another instance of Australians showing leadership on this issue.

In fact, the movement to eradicate polio from the world began with an Australian Rotarian, Sir Clem Renouf. The first seeds of the idea came to Sir Clem in 1979 while reading an article about how the World Health Organization had successfully eradicated smallpox. Rotary's initial successes against polio in Asia and South America soon convinced the rest of the world that polio eradication was possible. In 1988, health ministers from around the world agreed to work together to combat polio and the Global Polio Eradication Initiative was formed. This global partnership, involving Rotary International, the World Health Organization, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and UNICEF, has successfully reduced polio cases worldwide by 99 per cent—from an estimated 350,000 cases a year in 1988 to just 650 in 2011.

This year has seen further progress, with India achieving more than 18 months now without polio and with global case numbers dropping to their lowest ever level. Last month produced another success story when Angola, a previously polio-free country which had been struggling with the disease since it was reintroduced in 2005, also passed a year without a single case.

Despite this success, polio eradication stands at a tipping point. The Global Polio Eradication Initiative faces a funding gap of US$949 million, a shortfall which has caused vaccination campaigns in 33 countries to be scaled back or cancelled. Each cancelled campaign means thousands, sometimes even millions, of children miss out on the vaccine, creating the potential for mass outbreaks. While success would mean every child everywhere having a polio-free future, failure at this very last stage would mean potentially explosive polio outbreaks in polio-free areas. Recent outbreaks in polio-free countries, such as China, the Congo and Tajikistan, have seen large numbers of adult cases and fatality rates of up to 50 per cent.

Public support for polio eradication is strong, with Rotarians and supporters of the Global Poverty Project's End of Polio campaign being particularly vocal advocates in Australia. In May, I met with the campaign's director, Michael Sheldrick, as well as with Samah Hadid, the incoming Australian director of the Global Poverty Project. They told me about the impact of this campaign. Since July 2011, the End of Polio campaign has shown Australians not only the incredible progress being made against a potentially fatal disease but also the incredible opportunity we have as a country and as a government to contribute to one of the greatest human achievements of our time—only the second ever eradication of a human disease in history.

In just over a year, the End of Polio campaign has grown to include almost 30,000 ordinary people, as well as the likes of international superstar John Legend, Australian Living Treasure Sir Gustav Nossal, movie star Hugh Jackman, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, former Australian of the Year Simon McKeon and WA Governor Malcolm McCusker. I am delighted to hear that the Pratt Foundation has also recently added its support to this important campaign.

Meanwhile, Rotary, a service organisation with over 1.2 million members worldwide, has raised more than $1 billion in support of global polio eradication efforts. Together, Rotary International and the Global Poverty Project have brought together Australians from all walks of life in support of the vision of a polio-free world. Australian Rotarians and other members of the community have given both financial and non-financial support, joining citizens in many other countries of the world. This month, Prime Minister Gillard will join other world leaders in New York in town for the UN General Assembly to discuss the importance of supporting global efforts to end polio and to demonstrate that polio eradication is an issue that transcends the health sector to be a win for all of our societies.

Australia is a leader in polio eradication in the Southern Hemisphere. Our aid program helped eradicate polio in the Western Pacific during the 1990s. Last year at the Commonwealth Heads Of Government Meeting held in Perth, the Prime Minister pledged an additional $50 million in support of eradication efforts. That is why the Prime Minister has been invited to speak at this event in New York, alongside Ban Ki-moon, Bill Gates and the presidents of the only three remaining countries with polio—Nigeria, Afghanistan and Pakistan. This is a rare opportunity for the entire global community to rally behind a cause that will improve the lives of children for all future generations.

While world leaders are in New York for the General Assembly, another important advocacy event led by Australians will shine a spotlight on ending polio and extreme poverty, the Global Citizen Festival. This event will bring 60,000 change makers to Central Park for a concert designed to showcase the movement to end extreme poverty and to demonstrate the public support for the cause. The event has drawn audience members from the group taking action on extreme poverty and will shine a light on their passion for change and call on world leaders to do more, including supporting efforts to end polio. This is a powerful reminder of the amount of public support for action on extreme poverty issues and the key role Australia can play in the global community.

Australia's investments are having a life-saving impact. They have eliminated polio in the Pacific, invested in critical infrastructure, provided assistance in emergencies and helped educate a new generation. Funding programs like the global polio eradication initiative ensures that children can grow up healthy and strong, contributing to their economies and the wellbeing of their families. Research published in The Lancet has shown the financial benefits of ending polio to be between US$40 billion to US$50 billion by 2035.

It is important to remember that people in developing countries are working hard to improve their own lives. India's and Angola's recent success against polio would not have been possible without the efforts of the millions of local health workers and volunteers who travel from house to house, round after round, vaccinating children while calmly addressing the fears of concerned parents. Our aid ensures that these polio heroes have the resources needed to reach every last child with the polio vaccine. In the process we are helping to strengthen health systems more broadly because the tools and tactics being developed to reach children with the polio vaccine are enabling health workers to reach children with other life-saving health measures. The success of polio eradication efforts is a demonstration of what our foreign aid dollars can achieve.

I thank the government for its commitment to polio eradication and emphasise the importance of continuing to invest in polio eradication efforts and other foreign aid projects that assist the world's most vulnerable communities. W also think members of the opposition for lending their support to this important cause. Our leadership on this issue will help encourage every country that has benefited from becoming polio free to contribute even nominal amounts to this historic global effort. Ultimately, all countries share the responsibility for and the benefits of polio eradication.

Today I had a visit from a number of brilliant young people from the Micah challenge who were talking to me about making poverty history. This evening, the Parliamentary Association for UNICEF hosted the annual Robert Nesta event with guest speaker Dr Karen Allen, UNICEF's deputy representative in Pakistan. Another thing is, Dr Allen talked about the great efforts under way in that country in that country to end polio. The End of Polio campaign is an incredible effort by a great many people, organisations and countries. In closing, I want to pay particular tribute to the campaign director Michael Sheldrick, a young man from Perth with an unmatched passion, drive and single-minded focus to see the end of polio. His actions have triggered important processes of change. As Nelson Mandela said:

What counts in life is not the mere fact that we have lived. It is what a difference we have made to the lives of others that will determine the significance of the life we lead.

Michael McCormack (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I firstly want to commend the member for Fremantle for bringing this motion to the House. I know how committed she is on these humanitarian issues and I commend her for it. Polio is a highly infectious viral disease which may attack the central nervous system and is characterised by symptoms which range from a mild, non-paralytic infection to total paralysis in just a matter of hours. If polio is not eradicated, the world will always live with the potential to see the disease rise up again—and no-one wants that. If the United States $9 billion global investment towards eradication is not capitalised upon, 10 million children will be paralysed in the next 40 years.

Throughout history polio has been one of the greatest causes of disability and still today there is no cure. Major polio epidemics first began to occur in Europe in the 1880s and soon spread to the United States of America. By 1910, epidemics were becoming regular across the developed world, typically during the summer months. At its peak in the 1940s and 1950s, polio was paralysing or killing more than half a million people worldwide every year. Over the past 30 years global collaboration has reduced cases by 99 per cent. In 1988 there were more than 350,000 cases of polio throughout the world. In 2011 there were just 650 and the number of polio endemic countries had been reduced from 125 to three. The Global Polio Eradication Initiative advises that, in the past six months, there have been 92 cases of polio throughout the world—63 cases in Nigeria, 15 in Pakistan, 12 in Afghanistan and two in Chad.

Australia has been declared polio free. As the World Health Organization announced on 29 October 2000, the Western Pacific region has stopped the circulation of the indigenous wild polio virus. In 1985 Rotary International launched PolioPlus, a program which helps Rotary fund operational costs such as transportation, vaccine delivery, social mobilisation, and training of health workers in support surveillance activities. To date, Rotary, a wonderful organisation, has contributed more than US$1 billion.

PolioPlus promotes four key strategies for stopping the transmission of the polio virus—firstly, routine immunisations. This is essential as it is the primary way polio-free countries protect their children from the threat of imported polio. Four doses of oral polio vaccine in the first year of life are critical. Secondly, there are national immunisation days. Rotarians are the driving force of these days and provide funds for millions of drops of vaccine, promote campaigns in communities, distribute vaccines to health centres and serve as monitors working with local officials to reach every child possible. Thirdly, there is surveillance. Rotarians help health workers, paediatricians and others to find, report and investigate cases of acute flaccid paralysis, ideally within 48 hours of onset. PolioPlus has also helped fund containers which preserve during transport to a laboratory the integrity of samples taken from a patient. Lastly, Rotary supports mop-up campaigns, which are similar to national immunisation days but on a smaller and often house-to-house scale.

Districts 9700 and 9710, Rotary clubs in my electorate of Riverina, work hard to contribute to the PolioPlus program, holding movie nights and other fund-raising events to help rid the world of this scourge. It is also Rotary which has led the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, along with the World Health Organization, the United Nations Children's Fund and the US Centers for Disease Control. Since 1985 more than two billion children have been immunised through this great initiative. The Global Polio Eradication Initiative objectives are to interrupt transmission of the wild polio virus as soon as possible; to achieve certification of global polio eradication; and to contribute to health systems development and strengthening routine immunisation and surveillance for communicable diseases in a systemic way.

Thanks to the vaccinations offered through the Global Polio Eradication Initiative there are more than five million people walking today who would be paralysed had they not been immunised. Whilst polio remains endemic in only three countries, it has re-established transmission in Angola, Chad and the Democratic Republic of Congo, all of which were previously polio free. There are also several more countries which experienced outbreaks in 2011 due to the importation of the polio virus. This highlights the importance of immunisation even in countries which are thought to be polio free.

For the World Health Organization to certify a region to be polio free, it must meet the following conditions: there are at least three years of zero polio cases due to wild poliovirus; disease surveillance in countries meet international standards; and each country must illustrate the capacity to detect, report and respond to imported polio cases. In an address to the regional committee for South-East Asia on 5 September this year, Dr Margaret Chan, Director-General of the World Health Organization, stated:

On present trends, this region is set to be declared polio-free in January 2014.

You have provided definitive proof that eradication is technically feasible, and you have done so in what was arguably the most challenging of all the remaining strongholds of this virus.

This is what your experience tells the world. The poliovirus is not permanently entrenched. It is not destined to remain a perpetual threat to each new generation of children. It can indeed be driven out of existence.

That was wonderful news, fantastic, about moving towards helping the world become polio free. However, there is still a way to go.

For the world to be declared polio free, laboratory stocks must be contained and the safe management of the wild virus in activated polio vaccine manufacturing sites must be assured. Prevention of polio not only stops a person developing a debilitating disease, but also helps reduce poverty as it allows children and their families a greater chance of leading healthier and more productive lives. The global polio eradication initiative is expanded in most countries to also address other infectious diseases, such as avian influenza and Ebola, by building effective disease reporting and surveillance systems, training local doctors in establishing a worldwide laboratory network. This capacity is being utilised in health emergencies, including the 2010 floods in Pakistan and the 2011 drought in the Horn of Africa. It is important we do anything and everything we can to eradicate polio, helping Rotary and stopping this disease from spreading, including ensuring immunisation takes place early to prevent children and adults becoming infected in the future.

Finally, I would like to pay particular tribute to John Winterbottom, a good friend of mine, a fellow from Wagga Wagga who suffered the effects of polio early in his life. John is regarded as Wagga Wagga's most authoritative historian. He has not been well of late, battling a number of health complications. Despite his lifelong struggles, John has contributed marvellously to his community, such that he is a past recipient of Wagga Wagga's Citizen of the Year. His achievements show what can be done despite having such a debilitating disease. John's cheerful disposition, good humour, willingness to share his knowledge and courage against adversity have been an inspiration to me. I wish him well.

Gai Brodtmann (Canberra, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

When I was at primary school, I Can Jump Puddles by Alan Marshall was compulsory reading for us all. I remember how I used to go home and talk about it with my mum, and she used to recount the stories of her time at primary school when polio was running rife through Australia. We are talking in the 1940s here. She talked about the fact that when she was at primary school her school was quite often closed because of polio running through the community. To use her words, the picture theatres and the baths were regularly closed because of what was taking place with polio running through the community.

I was talking to her tonight to let her know that I was going to be speaking on this motion—I commend the member for Fremantle for putting this forward—and my mum was joking about the fact that there were only some schools in Melbourne who used to be closed as a result of these epidemics that were running through the community. She joked about the fact that it was always the poor schools, which was where she went. She said, 'Our school was regularly shut down as a result of the epidemic that was running through the Australian and Melbourne communities at that time.' She also spoke about the many schoolmates who did not come back to school as a result of contracting polio, and of hearing stories about the children or their parents having to be in iron lungs as a result of it.

This is only a recent past for Australia, and yet how easily people forget how dreadful this disease is and how debilitating it is? It is really important that we still remember the impact of polio. We still see people who have suffered from polio. I have relatives who have suffered from it; I have cousins-in-law who have suffered from it. They are still suffering as a result of contracting the disease, usually at a very young age, and have lived with it throughout their life. We cannot forget the impact of polio, which is why I rise to support this motion tonight.

The attempts to eradicate polio around the world are ongoing and need continual support. The Labor government is committed to providing $50 million to support the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, and I proudly support this measure. As I said, it was only a few generations ago that polio was a critical health issue in Australia and throughout the world. During the 1950s, polio epidemics spread through this country and the Northern Hemisphere. I remember when I was growing up seeing images of iron lungs, kids immobilised by polio and children in callipers only a generation or two ago. There was also a degree of panic, particularly when my mother was small child, about polio that we can only imagine today. Back then, parents were rightly overwrought with fear about a disease that left their children paralysed and in need of specialist care. Only 60 years ago, some thought polio was a modern plague such was its spread and impact throughout the world. I recently read a quote from a documentary on polio that said that 'apart from the atomic bomb, America's greatest fear was polio'. Polio has certainly left a major legacy both in Australia and around the world, and I understand that polio survivors form the largest single disability group in the country.

Polio was and remains a very real threat in many countries and, even though it has been eliminated through a very rigorous process of vaccination, it remains a serious issue on which we must be constantly vigilant. Since the 1980s, through the efforts of the global health organisations and NGOs, polio cases have been reduced in the order of 99 per cent—an extraordinary achievement, particularly from where we were in the 1950s. Yet, as we have noted today, in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nigeria polio is still an active health problem.

I want to briefly touch on the incredible history of the discovery of the vaccine for polio by Jonas Salk. Before that, the disease had stumped the medical researchers. It took about 120 years to find a vaccine from when the first-ever reported polio case was recorded in 1835. Jonas Salk, who was the American-born son of Russian-Jewish emigres to New York, was the scientist who made one of the most important medical breakthroughs of all time.

The success of polio eradication is recognised in this motion, with the acknowledgement that, in February this year, India was finally removed from the list of countries where it had remained endemic. For India, this historic milestone was reached when no new polio cases were reported for a whole year. The World Health Organization has rightly noted that India faces serious challenges in the future before it can finally declare the country polio free, but I know it will be dogged about it and I support the continued efforts of the government to support the global efforts to eliminate polio.

Patrick Secker (Barker, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Madam Deputy Speaker, I believe I could actually do my 90-second statement here at an unusual time. I want to make the point that I went to a primary school that had 32 children, and one of those children had had polio. We all know that a former Leader of the Opposition, Kim Beazley, suffered from polio as a young person, and this guy actually had a very similar build, which was fairly light in the bottom half and reasonably big in the top half. After his treatment, he was able to live quite a normal life. He played AFL football. He was not the fastest person on the field but he was certainly one of the cleverest. He also played cricket quite successfully as a spin bowler and a reasonable batsman. So there were some good news stories, but I think we can say without any doubt that no-one would have wanted to contract polio.

Like the member for Riverina, I would also like to pay homage to the Rotary organisation for its PolioPlus program. There is no doubt in my mind that we have some great service organisations in this world, but the Rotary organisation, I believe, is the only organisation in the world that could actually have achieved the PolioPlus program.

Debate adjourned.