19 March 2009
World TB Day
Fellow Parliamentarians
Special guests
Ladies and gentlemen
Welcome and thank you for the opportunity to speak at this launch.
We are slightly ahead of World TB Day which is next Tuesday but sometimes circumstance forces us to be a bit creative with dates.
We don't see too many cases of Tuberculosis in Australia so events like this are important to raise awareness of the disease amongst the community.
These events remind us that even though TB is not common in developed countries, it is still a very serious public health disease.
About one-third of the world's population - 2 billion people - have the TB bacillus.
While not all these people will become ill, someone with active TB can infect between 10 and 15 other people every year.
In 2006, 9.2 million people became ill with TB - and 1.7 million died.
In our region, nearly 2 million people have TB in the Western Pacific and about 3 million in South East Asia.
These are startling figures by any measure.
Most of those infected are among the poorest of the poor and the majority are in their productive years.
Close living and working conditions make them especially vulnerable.
Once infected and too ill to work, we start to see a drop in family incomes by 20 to 30 per cent. Life for families becomes even more precarious.
It's estimated the incomes of the world's poorest communities will drop by a total of US$12 billion as a direct result of TB.
TB and poverty are closely interlinked which is why the Australian aid program supports programs to control and reduce the spread of the disease.
We are firmly behind the Millennium Development Goals - including MDG6 which aims to halt and reverse the incidence of TB by 2015.
We need to remember that fifty years ago there were no cures for TB, but drugs to combat this disease were developed and have helped to save millions of lives.
But worryingly, multi-drug resistant TB is now found in at least five countries in our region - Papua New Guinea, East Timor, Kiribati, Samoa and Indonesia.
Indonesia ranks third in the world for its overall TB burden, with over half a million new cases each year.
For as long as TB confounds us, we will fight back in ways that are tailored to different settings and circumstances.
On a global level, Australia supports the work of the World Health Organisation to which we have committed $64 million over a four year period to 2012. This is allocated towards TB as as well as HIV and malaria.
In addition, to date we have committed $210 million to the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
The Global Fund has provided treatment to nearly 4 million people with TB.
On a country to country basis, Australia is working on a new program with Papua New Guinea to minimise the risk of TB transmissions across our two borders.
And in Indonesia, Solomon Islands and Kiribati, we are supporting the integration of HIV and TB services - recognising the link between these two diseases and the efficencies that can be gained by taking a combined approach.
The small Pacific Island nation, Kiribati has a very visible program in South Tarawa supported by AusAID that traces and treats people with TB. Once people have been treated and leave hospital, they are visited at home every day by health workers who supervise the taking of their medication.
These visits motivate people to continue taking their full course of treatment and not stop short when they begin to feel better.
Discontinuing medication is one of the reasons why TB becomes drug resistant.
The Kiribati health workers are easy to identify. They wear pink shirts and travel around the island on motorbikes. Their visibility reminds people not to be complacent about TB.
These are all good health programs and we are pleased to be supporting them.
CONCLUSION
Ladies and gentlemen.
Where we have poverty, TB will continue to thrive.
There is no one way to effectively treat the disease. So we need to work together to find the best methods of treatment for each setting.
We need to be vigilant about TB and awareness-raising is an important part of that.
So I thank you once again for holding this event to mark World TB Day.
Media inquiries: Mr Kerr's office - 02 6277 4991