Chris Crewther (Dunkley, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Recently I met with Chelsea Mather and her daughter, Scarlett, two constituents of mine in Dunkley who have type 1 diabetes. Chelsea and Scarlett are on multiple injections of insulin every day. Some days they need to prick their finger eight to 10 times. Now continual glucose monitoring, or CGM, is an option thanks to the federal government. It has improved their lives by helping to lessen things like finger pricks. As a mother of a four-year-old, Chelsea is grateful for the CGM, as it helps manage Scarlett's type 1 diabetes more efficiently. Of course, as she is a very active young girl, they still face a number of challenges even with CGM, much as I do with my own very active three-year-old daughter. Chelsea and Scarlett are this week representing the 817 people living with type 1 diabetes in Dunkley at the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation's Kids in the House campaign.

Following conversations with Chelsea and Scarlett in my electorate, I spoke to Minister Hunt as well about funding for diabetes research. The government will provide $125 million over nine years for the Medical Research Future Fund to establish a targeted translation research accelerator in chronic conditions, focusing on diabetes and heart disease. The fund will also support early-stage health and medical research discoveries to reach proof of concept and progress to human clinical trials. This is exciting news. I hope that together we can turn type 1 into type none.