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Decision to scale back sexual health clinics incorrect: Federal Health Minister
– Reported, 13 May 2013
Federal Health Minister Tanya Plibersek has warned the Queensland government’s decision to scale back sexual health clinics in north Queensland opens the door to a potential epidemic of sexually transmitted disease migrating across from Papua New Guinea.
Recent studies reveal that 10 per cent of adults in PNG could be HIV positive in 12 years.
Queensland Nurses Union Cairns organiser Kaylene Turnbull said three sexual health nurse positions had been lost in the Torres Strait and two sexual health positions would be lost from Cairns North hospital from June 30.
In addition, 13 indigenous health workers, who speak to indigenous people in their own language and provide the conduit to the sexual health nurses, have lost their jobs.
Ms Plibersek warned these cutbacks could have serious consequences.
“They do very important outreach work,” she said of the service.
“And if you don’t have those services, if you do de-fund those services, you are reducing the defences that Australia has against countries in our region that have much higher prevalent rates of sexually transmitted infections, including HIV/AIDS.”
A 2010 study into the prevalence of sexually transmitted diseases (STD) shows that Australia’s nearest northern neighbour, Papua New Guinea, had among the highest rates of STD in the Asia Pacific and described the situation as a potential epidemic.
“Modelling projections suggest that by 2025, adult HIV prevalence (in PNG) could be as high as 10 per cent and around 300,000 to 400,000 people will have died from AIDS-related illness,” Ms Plibersek said.
A Cairns-based Queensland Health spokeswoman said the sexual health staff cutbacks were minor.
Darren Russell, chair of Queensland Health’s Ministerial Advisory Committee on HIV/AIDS and Queensland Health’s director of sexual health in North Queensland works from Cairns.
Dr Russell said there were concerns over a range of diseases spreading south from PNG to north Queensland.
“That includes HIV, sexually transmitted diseases and turberculosis, Japanese encephalitis and chikungunya, a mosquito-born virus which is the new Dengue fever,” he said.
Dr Russell said Queensland needed “good sexual health clinics as part of the defence”, but declined to comment further.
In Brisbane this week, Ms Plibersek criticised how the Queensland government scaled back sexual health clinics, while using some of the clinics to launch the new 30-minute HIV/AIDS test on Tuesday.
Thirty-two sexual health nursing positions are set to go from the Biala House sexual health clinic on Brisbane’s Roma Street and the Redcliffe sexual health clinic will close.
“It is completely contradictory,” Ms Plibersek said.
“It makes no sense at all. It means that people who are not experienced in interpreting the test results and not experienced in counselling people who get a positive result might be administering the [STD] test.”
Queensland Health on Tuesday announced that the new faster blood tests for HIV/AIDS would be rolled out free through sexual health clinics from June 3.
A spokeswoman for state Health Minister Lawrence Springborg blamed sexual health staff cuts on federal government funding cuts. She refused to say how they would impact on the rollout of the rapid HIV/AIDs test.
In a statement, she said: “The decision of the LNP to implement rapid-testing in HIV is just one of the many measures this state government is embracing in an effort to combat and manage the impact and implications of the federal Labor government’s cuts to sexual health services in Queensland.”
Queensland’s HIV/AIDS rates have doubled in the past five years, sex health experts say.
Premier Campbell Newman last year announced plans for a $42 million Australian Institute of Tropical Disease and Medicine at James Cook University campuses in North Queensland.
Credits: http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/
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