Showing posts with label Torres Straits. Show all posts
A Papua New Guinean man whose daughter died in a
Queensland hospital has been told by bureaucrats he will have to use a
dinghy to get himself and his daughter's body home.
Petru Aniba
made a mercy dash from his home village to the Torres Strait in February
in the hope of saving his 14-year-old daughter Marthi, who was
suffering tuberculosis.She eventually died in Cairns Base Hospital. Her father too had tuberculosis and has only been released from quarantine.
Queensland Health officials said they would only fly the man and his dead daughter as far as the Torres Strait.
His friend Robert Slade says Mr Aniba travelled from his village to the Papua New Guinean township of Daru, and from there canoed to Saibai Island in the Torres Strait.
"Then from Saibai he was choppered to Thursday Island, then from Thursday Island he was flown down to the Cairns Base Hospital," Mr Slade said.
"Unfortunately, his daughter Marthi passed away on February 24 and then Aniba was put into isolation for a few months because of tuberculosis.
"He came out of isolation about, roughly, five weeks ago and has been waiting for him and his daughter to be able to be repatriated back home so he can bury his daughter.
"Queensland Health were prepared to send him and his daughter back to Saibai, but unfortunately from Saibai he would have to organise for his brother-in-law to bring a dinghy over from Daru to Saibai, which is an eight-hour journey in a dinghy and uses approximately 80 litres of fuel."
Mr Slade says Mr Aniba would have to take his daughter's body on board the dinghy without any refrigeration.
Outrage
The situation has outraged Warren Entsch, the Liberal MP for Leichhardt."How could we do this in this country?" he said.
"When this fellow basically takes a huge risk, he's seriously ill himself, comes across to our borders looking to try and save his 14-year-old daughter, as any parent would do, we say 'right, we'll dump him on Saibai and he can find his own way home and he can take the body of his daughter with him'.
"It is just heartless."
A Queensland Health spokeswoman says the department does have a policy of returning people to their point of entry.
Mr Entsch described that policy as "bloody bullshit".
"They know where he came from. That's a bit like saying 'all of these that are coming in illegally in the boats, well, we've only got to take them out and dump them back on Ashmore Reef'," he said.
Mr Entsch has launched an appeal to raise $15,000 in airfares for Mr Aniba.
But late Friday, Queensland Health released a statement saying it was prepared to provide whatever assistance was required to ensure Mr Aniba and his daughter's body were safely repatriated to their home village and that cost was not an issue.
Cairns District chief executive Julie Hartley-Jones said staff had met Mr Aniba on Thursday to discuss the best way to get him and his daughter home.
She said he asked to be flown to Saibai and for Queensland Health to provide fuel for the boat trip back to his home, which the department agreed to pay for.
However, she said Mr Aniba had since indicated he was reconsidering his options.
"Regardless of this, Queensland Health stands ready and willing to do everything possible to ensure Mr Petru and his daughter's body can be safely returned to their home village in PNG," she said.
Widespread dilemma
The case raises a more widespread dilemma in the Torres Strait.Many PNG citizens are making the desperate trip to Australia for medical treatment, suffering from conditions such as tuberculosis, cholera and meningitis.
The tuberculosis clinic of Saibai is the only one in the Torres Strait but has run out of federal funding.
That has prompted an appeal from medical professionals like Professor Ian Wronski, James Cook University's head of medicine, who says tuberculosis is a re-emerging disease.
"Bit by bit it will re-establish in the Torres, it may well be there now," he said.
"Naturally people from PNG move it into the Torres Strait and people from the Torres Strait move it into the Cape, and we'll see tuberculosis re-establish itself in Australia."
Queensland Health Minister Geoff Wilson was not available to talk about the Aniba case but earlier addressed the issue of the tuberculosis clinics.
"Health services to PNG nationals are the responsibility of the Federal Government, but rest assured the Queensland Government's made its views well known to the Commonwealth," he said.
"Only as of yesterday, I spoke with Nicola Roxon about that at the conclusion of the Health Ministers Council there in Melbourne."
Tuberculosis (TB) services in the Torres Strait
Dr Jeannette Young, Chief Health Officer, Queensland Health :
"The work that the Australian Government has done through AusAID in Papua New Guinea, specifically in the South Fly Province, has now reduced the risk to Queenslanders and indeed all Australians of contracting extremely drug-resistant TB.
A number of years ago, the Queensland Government made the decision to wind back the clinics that were being held in Saibai and Boigu, two small islands in the Torres Strait very close to Papua New Guinea.
"Those clinics were set up to provide services to Papua New Guinean nationals who had TB. They would come across the short gap of ocean, across to Australia to access these services. Unfortunately, we know that those types of services are not the best services to put in place for people with TB.
The best service you can offer someone with TB, particularly in a third world country, is the World Health Organization auspice service of DOTS -- direct observed treatment. The reason that is the best service is that then you can make sure that the patients are receiving their treatment every single day for the full course that is required. If that doesn't occur we know that there is a real risk that drug resistance can emerge. And indeed extremely drug resistant TB could emerge.
"So by putting in place a DOTS auspice program into PNG itself, you can reduce that risk. And that's the work that the Commonwealth Government has been doing through AusAID now for the last year.
They have been setting up treatment services within the villages and they've also enhanced the service that's available at Daru -- the referral hospital for that part of Papua New Guinea.
"They've put in place a sea ambulance to take patients to Daru if they've needed, but more importantly they have got services available in the actual villages where the people live. So they don't need to travel across the Strait, through to the Torres Strait to obtain services. In the past those services, although very well intentioned of course, meant that at some times people wouldn't be able to make the trip and would miss out on their drugs for that period and there would be issues with it.
"So now with the new process in place I am confident that we are reducing the risk to Australians from obtaining TB.
We have had very, very few cases over the years of TB within the Torres Strait itself. Torres Strait people, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders who live in those communities, of course can continue to access TB services as can any Queenslander. So I am confident all of these changes will actually reduce the risk to those people and to all Queenslanders.
Benefits of the Direct Observed Treatment Short-course (DOTS) for treating TB
"The World Health Organization recommends that wherever possible the DOTS program should be utilised -- direct observed treatment. That is where health workers actually monitor people taking their drugs every day during the treatment. Most sensitive TB regimes last around six months, so it's important that the people take the drugs every day for that six-month period and DOTS ensures that happens.
It's always much more difficult if you ask people to come to a clinic every six weeks or so, to pick up their medication because they mightn't be able to make the trip for whatever reason. Indeed we had some times when the border was closed and it was difficult for people to access the drugs. Also that they mightn't be aware of the importance of taking the drugs every single day if there isn't someone there to remind them. Which is why WHO recommends DOTS for all third world countries.
Rise of the Superbugs
The nightmare is here. Rampant use of antibiotics coupled with an explosion in global travel has led to superbugs spreading worldwide. Join us as we step into the lab with leading experts on antibiotic resistance, and listen to shocking stories of the health implications. Let’s face up to the horror of antibiotic resistance before it’s too late…Joel Beclu got a superbug following routine treatment for prostate cancer. “I lost touch with reality because of the painkillers,” he recalls. Joel’s life was only saved by rare antibiotics imported from overseas. With the discovery of antibiotics In the 1930s and 40s we became superhuman - able to survive chemotherapy, transplant surgery and intensive care. The loss of effective antibiotics would jeopardise all of that, since as Molecular Bioscientist Professor Matt Cooper tells us “infectious disease kills more people than cancer.”
Without antibiotics surgery used to be the last line of defence against infection. Now the use of radical surgery is on the rise again. Nick Komilionis picked up a superbug in his home country of Greece. In the end all drugs failed him and his life was only saved by having his bowel surgically removed. “We had to take a pre-1940s approach to cure him,” admits his doctor Professor Lindsay Grayson.
David Ricci was volunteering in a Calcutta slum when he was hit by a train, his leg badly mangled. He picked up superbug New Delhi metallo-beta-lactamase or NDM1. Somehow David finally made it home to America where a toxic drug killed off the infection just before it killed him. “They had to pull me off right before most of my organs were unretainable.” Now he walks on a prosthetic leg, treating every day as though it was his last.
“Every time we take an antibiotic we're giving the bug a chance to become a superbug” explains Matt Cooper. Countries like India are the “perfect petri-dish” for superbugs. Antibiotics are manufactured cheaply here and available over the counter. Waterways and even the soil are contaminated by waste from antibiotic manufacture. India's superbug researchers have been shunned for threatening a multi-billion dollar medical tourism industry. Dr Abdul Ghafur is one of the few Indian doctors prepared to speak out: “We can't wait and watch. We need urgent wartime measures to ration antibiotics.”
TB was once thought a disease of the past. Australia used to hold TB originating in Papua New Guinea at bay by isolating it in island hospitals. Cathrina is currently Australia's only known case of Extensively Drug Resistant Tuberculosis or XDR-TB. She made her way here from PNG after running out of TB drugs. Already five months in isolation in negative air pressure, her treatment could cost up to a million dollars. And she may not even survive. In remote PNG villages like Sigabaduru we track down other TB sufferers who have run out of drugs, just as Cathrina did. They are cases of superbug TB waiting to happen.
Sadly antibiotics are not cost-effective for drug companies. Those prepared to research new antibiotics are dwindling. And once a superbug gets out into the community, there may be no stopping it. As Thoracic Specialist Dr Stephen Vincent warns: “If it gets into the population, that's the disaster.”
An authoritative, timely film, on an issue we ignore at our peril.
West Papua Film
This film shows; the extremely brutal history the native population of West Papua have endured for many decades under the oppressive Indonesian Military.How, to this day they continue to struggle for independence from Indonesia, with historical pieces showing the UN Shame vote: Act of 'NO' Choice which lead to their colonisation and the continued thief, of the West Papuan's natural resources.
Filmed undercover in West Papua 2000/1 with historical footage obtained from various sources.
A film made by fPcN interCultural: www.fPcN-global.org/
Keep an eye on this page for an important message from the people of Sigabaduru
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| Get ready for the message in a bottle! |
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