Clinicians call for immediate action to supply heart disease medicine amid ongoing national shortage

ABC NEWS (Australia)

It’s been nearly a month since Australia was struck by a national shortage of the medicine used to treat rheumatic heart disease. In the Northern Territory, rheumatic heart disease rates are among the highest in the world, disproportionately affecting remote Indigenous communities. Now, clinicians are calling for immediate action to address the drug shortage, saying it not only harms patients directly but undoes the work of health initiatives which have been working on combatting the disease for decades.

Transcript

00:00Enrique Thomas suffered with rheumatic heart disease for nearly seven years before being

00:06formally diagnosed.

00:07I was in and out of hospitals since I was about seven, eight years old and the doctors

00:13really didn't know what was going on.

00:15They first believed that it was an electrical fault within the heart.

00:20He was finally diagnosed at 14 and now works with the Deadly Heart Trek, an initiative

00:25working to eliminate rheumatic heart disease in remote Australia.

00:28We have to have penicillin needles every month, so for me it's every three weeks, so we end

00:36up having around about 13, 14 needles every year.

00:41But the type of penicillin he needs, a drug commonly known as Bicillin, is increasingly

00:45hard to come by.

00:47In July this year, Australia's supply, marketed under the brand name Extensilin and subsidised

00:52under the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, was exhausted.

00:55People don't realise that rheumatic heart disease in Australia, we have some of the

00:59highest rates.

01:01And these kids that get diagnosed, because it's really mostly young people, and it's

01:05predominantly females, they need their Bicillin.

01:08In the weeks since Extensilin ran out, no alternative brands have been subsidised under the PBS, leaving

01:13clinicians in short supply of the life-saving medication.

01:16Now, clinicians here in the NT say the alternatives they do have are powder-based, they're prone

01:21to blocking up in syringes, and can be extremely painful for the children who have to receive

01:25them.

01:26On the front lines, clinicians are calling for a solution, which could include further PBS

01:31listings, or the drugs manufacture in Australia.

01:34We can deliver these fancy, expensive treatments like chemotherapy and so on, many, many very

01:40expensive medication, and the most basic and the cheapest medication will be run out of.

01:45And why is that?

01:47Because this formulation of penicillin is used in disadvantaged populations across the world.

01:53On top of the health implications, they say a shortage undoes the important messaging

01:57of organisations like the Deadly Heart Trek.

02:00It sends the message that maybe this medicine is not important, if the entire country doesn't

02:05have any, if the country of Australia is not responsible to deliver the basic, cheap medication

02:11that is required.

02:13It sends the message that maybe we don't matter.

02:16A disease of the past, plaguing the future of Australia's most marginalised communities.

Category

Transcript

Be the first to comment

Recommended