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The killer disease you thought was gone · The Front

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: From the Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey.
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  Speaker 1: It's Wednesday, May twenty seven, twenty twenty six. A huge
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: shakeup is coming for people on the doll with the
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  Speaker 1: Albanese government saying the existing system isn't helping get welfare
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  Speaker 1: recipients into work. That story is live now at the
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  Speaker 1: Australian dot com dot AU. One patient is dead and
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  Speaker 1: scores of Australians are infected with diptheria, a disease that
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  Speaker 1: haunted humanity for thousands of years and killed millions of children.
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  Speaker 1: Vaccines all but eliminated diphtheria, but now an outbreak is
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  Speaker 1: spreading from remote Aboriginal communities and seriously worrying experts. So
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  Speaker 1: what's causing it and how do we fight back?
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  Speaker 2: This buy is not expected to live. He was not immunite.
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  Speaker 2: Every twenty minutes a child is taken ill with diphia.
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  Speaker 2: Every three hours a child dies from deferia. Mother, have
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  Speaker 2: you forgotten to protect your child?
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  Speaker 1: Natasha Robinson is The Australian's Health editor and Natasha, this
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  Speaker 1: is a question I wouldn't have had to ask you
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  Speaker 1: in generations past. You and I are both parents and
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  Speaker 1: once upon a time parents were absolutely terrified of diphia.
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  Speaker 3: What is diperia, well, Diphtheria is a bacterial disease that
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  Speaker 3: has two iterations. It can be cutaneous, as in it
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  Speaker 3: affects a skin, or it can be respiratory, which is
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  Speaker 3: a more serious and potentially fatal version of the disease.
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  Speaker 3: It's a horrendous disease and it is very understandable why
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  Speaker 3: such a fear of this terrible disease when it was
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  Speaker 3: endemic in the community. The respiratory version results in the
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  Speaker 3: sort of coating over the throat that eventually makes it
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  Speaker 3: incredibly difficult to breathe, and it can lead to heart
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  Speaker 3: attacks and severe respiratory problems, which in years gone by
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  Speaker 3: had death rates almost as high as one in ten.
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  Speaker 3: The kachaneous version that has been the predominant strain that's
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  Speaker 3: been spreading around Remote Australia causes really horrendous skin source.
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  Speaker 3: But the real concern is when we started to see
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  Speaker 3: higher and higher rates of the respiratory version of this
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  Speaker 3: disease in Remote Australia, which has been occurring more recently
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  Speaker 3: as the spread has gotten larger and larger.
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  Speaker 2: We've done everything we can another young life wasted on
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  Speaker 2: necessarily because well meeting parents delayed time, maybe taking on
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  Speaker 2: towards tragedy in your home.
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  Speaker 3: Governments across the country are racing to contain the largest
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  Speaker 3: dip theoria outbreak since records began in Australia.
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  Speaker 1: A dip theoria outbreak in the Northern Territory has now
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  Speaker 1: spread to Western Australia, South Australia and Queensland. The government
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  Speaker 1: is preparing to roll out an emergency support package. With
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  Speaker 1: more than two hundred and twenty cases of diphtheria reported.
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  Speaker 3: There was a general understanding or belief that this was
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  Speaker 3: virtually an eradicated disease in Australia. In fact, it has
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  Speaker 3: been popping up, particularly in the past few years. We've
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  Speaker 3: seen a cluster of outbreaks in Queensland, and in fact
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  Speaker 3: the genomic analysis, at least without being definitively epidemiological evidence,
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  Speaker 3: indicates that this current outbreak has emanated from that Queensland
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  Speaker 3: outbreak which was bubbling along up until about twenty twenty
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  Speaker 3: three but apparently was not fully stamped out.
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  Speaker 1: I have thought that the diffory vaccine that you get
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  Speaker 1: as a child and the childhood immunization program gives you
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  Speaker 1: lifelong immunity. Is that still what scientists think or not?
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  Speaker 3: No, it's not the case. The immunity from dip theoria
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  Speaker 3: childhood vaccinations do wane over time in around about midlife.
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  Speaker 3: It's sort of from the age of fifty. People in
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  Speaker 3: order to have immunity will need to be boosted. So
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  Speaker 3: over the age of fifty, if you haven't been boosted,
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  Speaker 3: and a lot of people, not a lot of people,
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  Speaker 3: but some people, if you've had a cush or you've
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  Speaker 3: been exposed to tetanus, will have been boosted for dip theoria.
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  Speaker 3: Because the tetanus vaccine contains potassis and diphtheria. It's a
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  Speaker 3: triple vaccine, so that sort of has given some people
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  Speaker 3: immunity without them necessarily even knowing if they have been
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  Speaker 3: boosted for tetanus. But no one virtually in Australia is
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  Speaker 3: being told by their GP at this stage, Oh, you're
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  Speaker 3: over fifty, you haven't had a booster for diptheria in
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  Speaker 3: the past ten years, we'd better boost you for dips theira.
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  Speaker 3: And that's simply because the disease has not been in
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  Speaker 3: our community. But certainly if you're over fifty and you
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  Speaker 3: haven't received a booster in the last ten years, your
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  Speaker 3: immunity to dip through will have waned significantly.
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  Speaker 1: There's two big things happening, I suppose in vaccination. Looking
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  Speaker 1: at it from the outside, I'm not an expert like you,
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  Speaker 1: but it seems as though childhood vaccinations for some conditions
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  Speaker 1: are on the way back down again after some significant
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  Speaker 1: reforms led by US here at News Corp Australia which
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  Speaker 1: resulted in a huge uptake in childhood vaccines. That was
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  Speaker 1: the no Jab No Play campaign. Parents will only be
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  Speaker 1: allowed to send their children to childcare if they're vaccinated.
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  Speaker 3: It would be an absolute crime to not use the
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  Speaker 3: vaccines we already have.
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  Speaker 1: The no Jab no Play legislation was passed by Parliament
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  Speaker 1: last night. And there's some hesitancy to vaccines among adults
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  Speaker 1: that we're seeing after COVID. Are either of those Do
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  Speaker 1: you think at play in the defior outbreak that we're
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  Speaker 1: seeing now.
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  Speaker 3: I think we have to assume that they are. But
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  Speaker 3: there's a lot of nuance here because this is an
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  Speaker 3: outbreak affecting Remote Australia and in general Remote Australia, Aboriginal communities,
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  Speaker 3: Aboriginal controlled health services do extremely well with childhood vaccination,
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  Speaker 3: and the national rates of childhood vaccination for Indigenous children
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  Speaker 3: sit higher than the national rates for all five year olds,
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  Speaker 3: for instance, by about one percentage points.
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  Speaker 1: Quite significant.
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  Speaker 3: Why are we seeing a spread of such an ancient
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  Speaker 3: disease across remote Australia and that boils down to the
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  Speaker 3: same reasons in terms of endemic disadvantage, living conditions, vulnerability
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  Speaker 3: of health. Are the same reasons that we have rheumatic
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  Speaker 3: heart disease in Remote Australia, the same reasons we still
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  Speaker 3: see cases of leprosy in the Northern Territory. So this
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  Speaker 3: is a very vulnerable population and I think this is
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  Speaker 3: something that is going to require some policy shifts in
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  Speaker 3: terms of vaccination schedules once we get this outbreak under control,
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  Speaker 3: to make sure that we don't see something like this
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  Speaker 3: occur again.
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  Speaker 1: Do you mean potentially boosters for adults of recommended as
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  Speaker 1: part of adult healthcare?
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, I do. I think that there has to be
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  Speaker 3: serious consideration that when we're looking at the advice in
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  Speaker 3: the National Numnization Handbook, that we have some explicit advice
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  Speaker 3: perhaps that Aboriginal Torres Strait Islander people should be boosted
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  Speaker 3: after the age of fifty if they haven't had a
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  Speaker 3: booster in the past ten years. In the wake of
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  Speaker 3: this outbreaker, I think surely that's something that has to
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  Speaker 3: be on the table.
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  Speaker 1: It's always seemed to me as though vaccinations, the vaccine
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  Speaker 1: program was almost a victim of its own success in
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  Speaker 1: those parts of Australia where there is increasing hesitancy. Nobody
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  Speaker 1: my generation has really heard of polio. They don't understand
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  Speaker 1: why the polio vaccine was this game changer that saved
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  Speaker 1: hundreds of thousands of people's lives. Similar to hooping cough.
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  Speaker 1: They've never seen a child suffering from hooping coff and
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  Speaker 1: don't necessarily know why they should have to get their
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  Speaker 1: child vaccinated because it's horrible to take a baby to
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  Speaker 1: get a vaccine.
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  Speaker 2: Cry you feel awful.
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  Speaker 1: What do you think about what's happening? More generally the
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  Speaker 1: big picture, if we zoom out about vaccines in Australia.
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  Speaker 3: I think that what we're clearly seeing, and this is
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  Speaker 3: probably like a Canarian The coal mine in terms of
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  Speaker 3: this dip theory or outbreak, is the re emergence of
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  Speaker 3: diseases we thought were a thing of the past. We're
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  Speaker 3: seeing it already with measles. I think, if we start
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  Speaker 3: to see polio in our community, my god, what an
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  Speaker 3: unbelievable state of affairs. I mean, I remember as a
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  Speaker 3: school student having a science teacher, you know, who had
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  Speaker 3: polio as a child, and the way I vividly remember
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  Speaker 3: the way he woked. He wore a big shoe that
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  Speaker 3: raised his foot. I remember the stories that I heard,
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  Speaker 3: even though it wasn't really happening in my lifetime. And
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  Speaker 3: I remember the stories of kids in iron lungs, and
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  Speaker 3: those stories are not in the minds of young parents anymore.
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  Speaker 3: We are seeing the tip of the iceberg here. I think,
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  Speaker 3: in the wake of COVID, in terms of hesitancy and
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  Speaker 3: dropping rates of vaccination, which are in years from now on,
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  Speaker 3: are going to see an increasing reemergence of these diseases.
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  Speaker 3: And I'm not quite sure how we get the message
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  Speaker 3: across that these are absolutely terrible diseases.
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  Speaker 1: Terrible diseases. The government doesn't really do a lot of
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  Speaker 1: explicit messaging. I mean, I am more exposed to messaging
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  Speaker 1: about how smoking is bad for me than I am
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  Speaker 1: to why the measles vaccine is important and what Tennis
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  Speaker 1: even is I mean you and I both used to
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  Speaker 1: having tennis shots as soon as you fell over or
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  Speaker 1: got bitten by a dog when you were a kid. Again,
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  Speaker 1: I haven't been exposed to that as a parent in
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  Speaker 1: the past decade and a bit of parenting. Yet.
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  Speaker 3: We now have a Australian Center for Disease Control and
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  Speaker 3: this is something that they're thinking a long and hard
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  Speaker 3: about and they're in this leadership space now led by
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  Speaker 3: Professor Zoe Wayner, and I think she's thinking very deeply
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  Speaker 3: about how to get that message through. Coming back to
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  Speaker 3: this outbreak itself of diphtherior, we know that there is
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  Speaker 3: an incredibly effective network of Aboriginal community controlled health services
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  Speaker 3: in across remote and regional Australia. They do a magnificent job.
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  Speaker 3: They are highly trusted by the community. You know, in
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  Speaker 3: some communities the health service is the center of community life.
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  Speaker 1: The staff are from the.
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  Speaker 3: Community quite often, and in COVID nineteen they did an
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  Speaker 3: incredibly good job. There were a lot of fears that
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  Speaker 3: Aboriginal communities in remote Australia were going to cop the
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  Speaker 3: absolute brunt of COVID nineteen and they didn't, and that
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  Speaker 3: was largely to do with the efforts of community controlled
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  Speaker 3: aboriginal health organizations who were well resourced and the full
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  Speaker 3: gamut vaccination, absolutely rigorous contact tracing, et cetera, et cetera.
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  Speaker 3: That seems to have been slow to get off the
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  Speaker 3: mark here with diptheria, and there's questions I think to
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  Speaker 3: be asked about that was there a lack of resourcing?
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  Speaker 3: Were these vaccines to boost adults distributed early and quickly?
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  Speaker 3: Were contact tracing teams sent out to ring fence these
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  Speaker 3: outbreaks in a timely manner? Why was it allowed to
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  Speaker 3: bubble away this outbreak that has been building up since
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  Speaker 3: October last year with the Commonwealth calling an emergency in May.
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  Speaker 3: So I think these are all pertinent questions here. And
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  Speaker 3: the vaccination issue is a wider issue and it's a
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  Speaker 3: national issue. But we have a very vulnerable community here
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  Speaker 3: that is being subject to an outbreak that is totally unprecedented,
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  Speaker 3: and I think we've got some lessons to learn from this. Well.
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  Speaker 1: I'll be booking my diptheria vaccination booster this afternoon. Thanks Natasha,
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  Speaker 1: Thanks Claire. Natasha Robinson is The Australian's Health editor. You
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  Speaker 1: can read all her work right now at the Australian
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  Speaker 1: dot com, dot au