Anne Webster (Mallee, National Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Regional Development) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to call the chamber's attention to the issue of heart failure. Heart failure affects more than 400,000 Australians and contributes to 61,000 deaths per year. It accounts for 70,000 hospital admissions per year. Tragically those in rural areas and Indigenous Australians bear a disproportionate burden of heart failure. Data released from the Heart Foundation shows that death from heart disease is 60 per cent higher in rural and remote areas of Australia compared to metropolitan areas. Hospitalisations in regional areas due to heart attack are double metropolitan rates, and hospitalisations due to heart failure are 90 per cent higher. Any premature death is a tragedy but in regional communities the loss of a young heart failure victim is both tragic and shocking.

On Australia Day in 2019, Scott Umback, the picture of health and fitness and father of two young boys, lost his life at 42 years of age to an undiagnosed and completely unexpected heart condition. He was a leader in the Mildura community and the husband of Katrina, who has devoted herself to promoting heart health and advocating for the establishment of a new cardiac service in Mildura where she lives. I have the utmost respect for Katrina, who is a shining example for her children and her community. Katrina is calling attention to the service gap in our region. Scott was never offered an angiogram, which could have diagnosed his condition and potentially saved his life. The reason? The service is available not in Mildura. It is still not available. His only option would have been to travel nearly 600km to Melbourne for a procedure he was unaware he needed.

An angiogram could have diagnosed Scott's heart condition. Ensuring access to high-quality health care in regional and rural areas has always been and will continue to be a priority for me. It is something that I, as the shadow assistant minister for regional health, focus heavily on every day. The regions deserve equitable access to health care. This includes access to facilities such as a catheterisation laboratory, or cath lab, which would prevent so many needless deaths through procedures which have become less invasive over time. It should be a basic human right for those who live in regional communities to be able to access angiograms and lifesaving treatment like percutaneous insertion procedures such as coronary artery stenting, which, thanks to modern medicine, does not require open-heart surgery anymore. This is absolutely possible in Mildura and it ought to be funded. Local and timely access to this procedure will give access to more people to undergo preventative and acute angiograms.

As I said in my maiden speech, your postcode should not determine your health status but right now in so many ways it still does, including when it comes to preventing heart failure. Increasing access to services is just one way to improve our health outcomes in the regions. I note that the pharmaceutical benefits advisory committee has recommended the Australian government subsidise access to Jardiance. Jardiance is the first medicine indicated to treat patients with heart failure with preserved ejection fraction HFpEF to reduce the risk of cardiovascular death or hospitalisation due to heart failure. It has been clinically proven and approved by the TGA and is a breakthrough for the 200,000 Australians currently living with HFpEF. I fully support the recommendations and manufacturer Boehringer Ingelheim's bid to have Jardiance listed on the PBS for these patients. This has the potential to shift the dial for regional patients with this form of heart failure. The Labor government has done little to ease the cost-of-living pressures on Australian households. Here lies a simple way to make a difference through subsidised access to potential life-saving medicine.

The coalition have always supported measures to tackle heart disease. Heart health checks were introduced to the MBS in 2019. Four years on, these checks are now under threat.