The federal health department’s tepid response to the appeal for funding for a national hydrocephalus register shows a lukewarm attitude to public health.
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When one-in-500 babies each year in Australia are born needing brain surgery for this terrible condition, the government’s position is a false economy.
Surgeons estimate they need just $200,000 per year to fund a national register of all hydrocephalus procedures.
It would be the first step in identifying what goes wrong in up to half of all brain surgery for this condition.
Surgeons must insert shunts to drain fluid from the brains of children and adults who live with hydrocephalus.
Up to half of these procedures fail within two years and the painful and life-threatening surgery must be repeated, at enormous cost to the public health system and the private purse alike.
That does not even touch on the trauma for the patients who go into surgery unsure of the outcome, and their families.
It is bad enough undergoing surgery fearing the effects of an anaesthetic, let alone the effects of a less-than reliable procedure.
Bringing all the information about such procedures together, nationally, is the first step to doing better.
If the cost of a national register was extreme, parents could understand the delay, but $200,000, in the context of government revenue, is a drop in the ocean.
The funds that would be saved by improved surgery would recoup that investment eventually.
The Coppin family, of Moruya, is bravely campaigning for change, but their own world could be turned upside down at any moment.
If 12-year-old Darcy, Jane and Brad’s daughter, becomes ill again, their energy for campaigning will also be depleted – but they won’t stop.
Don’t make them wait for what already makes so much sense.