Northern Territory faces shortage of life-saving rheumatic heart disease medicine

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Its 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, RHD 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

00:07formally diagnosed.

00:08I was in and out of hospitals since I was about seven, eight years old and the doctors

00:14really didn't know what was going on.

00:16They 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.

00:29We have to have penicillin needles every month.

00:33So for me, it's every three weeks.

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

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

00:46hard to come by.

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

00:53under 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.

01:00And these kids that get diagnosed, because it's really mostly young people and it's

01:05predominantly females, they need their Bicillin.

01:09In the weeks since Extensilin ran out, no alternative brands have been subsidised under

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

01:17Now, clinicians here in the NT say the alternatives they do have are powder-based.

01:21They're prone to blocking up in syringes and can be extremely painful for the children

01:25who have to receive them.

01:27On the front lines, clinicians are calling for a solution, which could include further

01:31PBS listings 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.

01:42And the most basic and the cheapest medication will be run out of.

01:46And 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

01:58of organisations like the Deadly Heart Trek.

02:01It sends the message that maybe this medicine is not important if the entire country doesn't

02:06have any, if the country of Australia is not responsible to deliver the basic, cheap medication

02:12that is required.

02:14It sends the message that maybe we don't matter.

02:17A disease of the past, plaguing the future of Australia's most marginalised communities.

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