Mr BONSON - 2004-08-26
Can you advise the House what the government is doing to reduce the incidence of scabies and skin sores in children living in remote areas of East Arnhem Land?
ANSWER
Madam Speaker, I thank the member for Millner for his question. It is a very serious issue, as I reported to this House last week during another debate.
Scabies in young children is connected to chronic disease in later life - everything from kidney failure to heart problems. In fact, the more we can cut down infections and parasitic conditions in young children, the better their health outlook will be as adults. This is absolutely crucial work, to try and turn down those very worrying statistics in chronic disease; particularly renal failure.
This project, Healthy Skin, is a collaboration between my department, the research institutes of CRC for Aboriginal Health, Menzies School of Health Research and Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, the Commonwealth government, private funders such as Rio Tinto Aboriginal Foundation and the Ian Potter Foundation, and community organisations in six Yolngu Communities.
The project builds on work done within my agency. We know how to get rid of these mites from communities through a whole range of environmental health interventions, and through treating the bug itself to knock it off. It is not rocket science. We know how to do this; it just needs a concerted campaign. By starting in these six communities, we believe that we can not only remove the scabies infection from these communities, but defend that infection-free zone over time into the future.
The Healthy Skin program involves: community education and planning; community screening of children 0 to 5 years every three months, and school age children annually; once only treatment of the whole community with Permethrin 5% cream to treat the scabies mite; community clean-up days and celebrations; monitoring of the skin status through the baby clinics; and regular clinic audits and feedback of prevalence data.
This regional approach will extend our knowledge of how often the infection can reinfect a community, and enables us to get a mite-free zone that is defendable rather than having a small infection-free oasis that can be easily infected from communities around it.
We are trying to get this out and keep it out of these communities. We will reap the benefit of this over a long period of time. Hopefully, it will appear in chronic disease statistics well into the future.
ANSWER
Madam Speaker, I thank the member for Millner for his question. It is a very serious issue, as I reported to this House last week during another debate.
Scabies in young children is connected to chronic disease in later life - everything from kidney failure to heart problems. In fact, the more we can cut down infections and parasitic conditions in young children, the better their health outlook will be as adults. This is absolutely crucial work, to try and turn down those very worrying statistics in chronic disease; particularly renal failure.
This project, Healthy Skin, is a collaboration between my department, the research institutes of CRC for Aboriginal Health, Menzies School of Health Research and Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, the Commonwealth government, private funders such as Rio Tinto Aboriginal Foundation and the Ian Potter Foundation, and community organisations in six Yolngu Communities.
The project builds on work done within my agency. We know how to get rid of these mites from communities through a whole range of environmental health interventions, and through treating the bug itself to knock it off. It is not rocket science. We know how to do this; it just needs a concerted campaign. By starting in these six communities, we believe that we can not only remove the scabies infection from these communities, but defend that infection-free zone over time into the future.
The Healthy Skin program involves: community education and planning; community screening of children 0 to 5 years every three months, and school age children annually; once only treatment of the whole community with Permethrin 5% cream to treat the scabies mite; community clean-up days and celebrations; monitoring of the skin status through the baby clinics; and regular clinic audits and feedback of prevalence data.
This regional approach will extend our knowledge of how often the infection can reinfect a community, and enables us to get a mite-free zone that is defendable rather than having a small infection-free oasis that can be easily infected from communities around it.
We are trying to get this out and keep it out of these communities. We will reap the benefit of this over a long period of time. Hopefully, it will appear in chronic disease statistics well into the future.
Last updated: 09 Aug 2016