The Health News – 17 October 2016

Overview:
•  Eligible National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) clients are waiting up to a year for coverage plans despite being approved for funding, Dignity for Disability MLC Kelly Vincent has said. He also said that people were being accepted into the scheme but were then being told they would need to wait before a coverage plan could be drawn up.

• Natasha McMillan, who lost her daughter Eloise, during delivery at Bacchus Marsh hospital, north-west of Melbourne, says she hopes reforms to the system will spare other families the same tragedy. The Victorian Government has committed to overhauling hospital safety, introducing a new oversight agency, better training and data sharing to reduce the number of avoidable deaths in hospitals to zero.

• In West Point slum in the capital Monrovia, which was quarantined during the Ebola epidemic, health workers say water shortages and overflowing toilets are putting patients at risk of infection and disease. Nurses have to stop mid-treatment to fetch water and patients are having to relieve themselves in dirty fields outside health centres, sanitation charity WaterAid said.

News on Health Professional Radio. Today is the  17th of October 2016. Read by Rebecca Foster. Health News\

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-10-16/eligible-ndis-clients-waiting-up-to-a-year/7937040

Eligible National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) clients are waiting up to a year for coverage plans despite being approved for funding, a South Australian MLC has said.

Dignity for Disability MLC Kelly Vincent said people were being accepted into the scheme but were then being told they would need to wait before a coverage plan could be drawn up.

“Our office is certainly aware of people waiting up to a year, from the time they’ve been told ‘yes you’re eligible to meet the criteria’ to putting together plans which lead to a funding package,” she said.

“I would say there are hundreds of people in that category.”

The State Government said there were about 7,800 South Australians between the ages of zero and 14 receiving services via the NDIS.

From January 1 next year the second phase of the staggered roll-out will extend eligibility to those aged 15 to 17, adding about 2,000 more people to the scheme.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-10-14/bacchus-marsh-mother-pleads-for-system-change-after-baby’s-death/7934362

A Melbourne mother whose baby died during delivery at Bacchus Marsh hospital, north-west of Melbourne, says she hopes reforms to the system will spare other families the same tragedy.

Natasha McMillan, who lost her daughter Eloise, said the family should have been celebrating her daughter’s fifth birthday this week.

“Instead, we’re mourning the loss of her for another time, because of the medical negligence that has happened,” Ms McMillan said.

“In February this year we found out that it was an avoidable case, and that it was medical negligence that took our daughter away from us.”

The Victorian Government has committed to overhauling hospital safety, introducing a new oversight agency, better training and data sharing to reduce the number of avoidable deaths in hospitals to zero.

The review was brought about after 11 babies were found to have died avoidable deaths at the Bacchus Marsh hospital.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-10-14/lack-of-water-and-broken-toilets-plague-liberia/7932626

More than two years after the world’s worst Ebola outbreak began in West Africa, health facilities in Liberia are struggling to operate due to a lack of running water and functioning toilets, sanitation charity WaterAid says.

In West Point slum in the capital Monrovia, which was quarantined during the Ebola epidemic, health workers say water shortages and overflowing toilets are putting patients at risk of infection and disease.

Nurses have to stop mid-treatment to fetch water and patients are having to relieve themselves in dirty fields outside health centres, the Britain-based charity said.

Liberia was declared free of the deadly haemorrhagic fever for the fourth time in June this year. The epidemic killed more than 11,300 people and infected some 28,600 as it swept through Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia from 2013.

According to WaterAid, nine in 10 health facilities in Liberia do not meet the health ministry’s standards for water supplies.

Nearly four in 10 facilities in low and middle-income countries lack access to water, more than a third do not have soap for handwashing, and a fifth lack adequate sanitation, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).