00:01There's been no shortage of challenges across the board faced by state and territory governments
00:06in responding to this diphtheria outbreak.
00:08But the one thing we've heard most of all has been the workforce shortages.
00:12This is a disease which not only have we not seen in Australia at this scale for decades,
00:17but it's also hit some of the most under-resourced parts of our country.
00:21Now we know that the federal government came to the table with a $7.2 million funding package
00:25to mitigate the spread of diphtheria yesterday.
00:28The feedback that we've heard from health practitioners, at least here in the Northern Territory,
00:32since then has been primarily positive.
00:34At a vaccination clinic in Alice Springs yesterday, health practitioners told the ABC that they
00:39have a steady supply of the vaccines available and, most importantly, have had a very consistent
00:43uptake of people willing to take them.
00:46As we know, however, this isn't a disease which is limited to the Northern Territory.
00:50While there's currently, as of yesterday afternoon, 157 cases recorded here in the NT, there's
00:55also upwards of 80 cases over in North Western Australia.
00:59Now, speaking to the ABC, health practitioners over there, Aboriginal health practitioners
01:03from Aboriginal community-controlled organisations specifically, say they would like to see some
01:08of the workforce surges that we've had here in the NT over in that part of the country.
01:13They've also raised concerns about the availability of azithromycin, an antibiotic that's used to treat the symptoms of diphtheria,
01:20which isn't currently listed on the PBS. Now, Federal Health Minister Mark Butler said that
01:26listing is a decision for the medical experts in charge of the PBS and the decision as to
01:31whether or not it should be subsidised for diphtheria treatment will likely be made in
01:34the coming months. Until then, however, federal health, federal ministers, both health and
01:39Indigenous Affairs have really, really pushed this outbreak that needs to be taken incredibly
01:44seriously, not just in the north and central parts of Australia, but in the southern states
01:48as well. Here's what Indigenous Affairs Minister Malindiri McCarthy had to say on it this morning.
01:52The growing concern, national concern of diphtheria and what we are seeing in terms of the Northern
02:00Territory, Western Australia, parts of Queensland and the top of South Australia is of national
02:06concern. No one is immune from this. We must make sure that we work as a country.
02:12And what criticism has the Northern Territory government faced, Joseph?
02:18Well, it's mainly been around the time that it took for the Northern Territory government to respond
02:22to this outbreak and get sufficient messaging out there in the community. Now, the first public
02:26health alert regarding diphtheria in the Northern Territory came on March 25th when there were four
02:31identified cases, three in Darwin and one in Alice Springs. However, Federal Health Minister Mark Butler
02:36has also said that the NT government didn't reach out to the feds until late April, around a month
02:42later. Now, at the same time, there's been an intense focus on the number of public appearances
02:46that NT Health and the health minister here in the Territory, Steve Edgington, have made since the
02:51outbreak. Steve Edgington stood up alongside Malindiri McCarthy at a press conference in Sydney this
02:56morning, but is yet to stand up alongside NT Health here in the Northern Territory. It should also be
03:01noted that the one suspected diphtheria death that we've received so far wasn't confirmed until very
03:07recently by NT Health, and the autopsy is still awaiting. But it was actually confirmed by the
03:12Congress of Aboriginal Health Organisations in Central Australia. Now, this morning, we've also
03:18heard from Dr Dawn Casey from the National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation, who said
03:23that while there's a comprehensive response to the outbreak now, she would have liked to see it a lot
03:28earlier. We started with our Territory Government Community Controlled Health Services in Alice
03:35Springs in particular, started lobbying the government way back in early April and became, we were really
03:42concerned about how quickly it was spreading. So the government's taken, you know, a number of weeks
03:48to respond, but they have responded in a comprehensive way. They just do need to, in future, respond much more
03:55quickly than they have in the past. Now, Steve Edgington has defended the government's record on messaging. He says that
04:01the
04:01Chief Health Officer, Dr Paul Burgess, has done a number of stand-ups and spoken to the media a number
04:06of times on this
04:07outbreak. Dr Paul Burgess, in turn, has said that the messaging was always proportionate to the size of the outbreak
04:12at the time. However, there is no shortage of
04:15questions being posed to the Northern Territory Government and NT Health, and there's likely to be many more in weeks
04:20to come.
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