The Health News Australia October 9 2017
- Australian adults born after 1966 may not be fully protected against the measles virus because of historical inconsistencies in how the immunisation vaccine was administered. Although measles vaccination programs began rolling out across Australia from the 1960s, the second dosage now viewed as necessary to be fully immune to the virus was not introduced until much later.
- Australian male health company, Wellness Enterprises Pty Limited which promised to help men lose weight and increase their libido through testosterone restoration treatments has been fined $127,500 for unlawful advertising.
- New data released shows that health expenditure exceeded 10% of gross domestic product for the first time in 2015-16. The growth in health spending continues to slow, but not to the same extent as GDP growth.
News on Health Professional Radio. Today is the 9th of October 2017. Read by Tabetha Moreto. Health News
Australian adults born after nineteen sixty six may not be fully protected against the measles virus because of historical inconsistencies in how the immunisation vaccine was administered.
As Melbourne and Sydney each struggle with a measles outbreak in which thirteen cases have been recorded in the past fortnight, health officials are warning adults between twenty six and fifty two years of age that they may not be properly vaccinated against the virus. Although measles vaccination programs began rolling out across Australia from the nineteen sixties, the second dosage now viewed as necessary to be fully immune to the virus was not introduced until much later. Currently children are given two doses in infancy – one at twelve months and another at eighteen months. But the National Centre for Immunisation Research and Surveillance says the second dose was not fully funded until nineteen ninety two and was initially administered when students were in high school, meaning coverage of the vaccine was not as comprehensive.
Officials say people older than fifty two are unlikely to have been vaccinated but would likely have either had the virus as a child or been exposed to it sufficiently to make vaccination unnecessary. On Tuesday health officials in NSW confirmed two people in Sydney’s north and south had been diagnosed with the virus. In one of the cases, the person, from Sydney’s northern beaches, had recently visited Melbourne, where eleven cases of the virus have been recorded in a fortnight. It marks the seventieth case of measles in Australia so far in two thousand seventeen and has prompted a warning to be aware of symptoms such as fever, sore eyes and a cough followed a few days later by a non-itchy rash. The World Health Organisation declared that Australia had officially eradicated measles transmission in two thousand fourteen and ninety five percent of all Australian five-year-old children are fully vaccinated. But there are still dozens and often hundreds of cases recorded each year.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-10-04/mens-health-clinic-fined-for-unlawful-advertising/9016174
An Australian male health company which promised to help men lose weight and increase their libido through testosterone “restoration” treatments has been fined one hundred twenty seven thousand five hundred for unlawful advertising. Wellness Enterprises Pty Limited, which traded as Australian Male Hormone Clinic, was convicted of seventeen charges in Downing Centre Local Court in Sydney. The charges were brought by the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency or AHPRA after the clinic published newspaper advertisements which claimed they could treat testosterone deficiency.
“Australian men no longer have to suffer in silence with the symptoms of low testosterone,” the clinic proclaimed in a full-page ad published in the Sydney Morning Herald in April two thousand seventeen.
The advertisements claimed that its tailor-made programs “based on blood test results and hormone levels” could increase energy, focus, masculinity and strength, and ability to satisfy sexual partners. AHPRA challenged the validity of the claims citing best available evidence.
This is the first time a corporation, not just an individual health practitioner, has been convicted following advertising charges brought by AHPRA.
….
Some public health experts said health authorities had been too slow to act to stop health clinics running misleading advertising. Ken Harvey, an adjunct associate professor at the School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine at Monash University, said companies often go into liquidation before any effective action is taken. The ABC had been contacted by many patients who signed up for pills from the Australian Male Hormone Clinic, only to be disappointed with what they received.
New data released shows that health expenditure exceeded ten percent of gross domestic product for the first time in two thousand fifteen to two thousand sixteen. The growth in health spending continues to slow, but not to the same extent as gross domestic product (GDP) growth. Last year, one hundred seventy point four billion dollars was spent on health (three point six percent), six billion dollars more in real terms than in two thousand fourteen to two thousand fifteen, the figures from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare show. It was the fourth consecutive year growth was below the ten-year average of four point seven percent. A health economist with the Grattan Institute, Doctor Stephen Duckett, said the share of the economy represented by health had hit ten point three percent largely due to a slowing increase in GDP. But breaching that ten percent level is still important, because this means one in every ten dollars the economy is being spent in the health sector. Almost seventy percent of health spending is government spending.
….
But a professor of health economics with the University of Melbourne, Philip Clarke, said state and federal governments needed to act now to avoid a spending and funding crisis. The data showed that state and territory governments contributed forty four point four billion dollars to health expenditure in two thousand fifteen to two thousand sixteen, up from twenty five point nine or forty one point nine billion dollars the previous year.
0 Comments