Health summit to focus on prevention rather than cure

Apr 9 2008

The National Prevention Summit in Melbourne this week is the first such summit to be held in Australia.

The aim of the summit is to establish a healthcare system which is more able to deal with preventable illnesses such as diabetes, heart and lung diseases, some cancers and mental illness.

One topic of discussion will be health promotion through the healthcare system in order to avert some of the deaths from preventable illnesses which are expected to reach 1.5 million in the next 15 years.

The federal Health Minister Nicola Roxon, Victorian Health Minister Daniel Andrews, National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisations chairman Dr. Mick Adams and National Heart Foundation chief executive Dr. Lyn Roberts, are all expected to speak.

Experts say chronic diseases account for the majority of deaths in Australia, and preventing them would lead to huge savings in government expenditure which costs more than $50 billion each year and would improve productivity.

A new government-commissioned report has estimated that the cost of alcohol, tobacco and illegal drug use, at $56-billion a year and serves to emphasise the need for investment in preventative health; tobacco control measures, have reportedly already saved the health system as much as $500 million a year.

Professor Mike Daube, the President of the Public Health Association says Australia is facing a tidal wave of preventable disease and 50 per cent of cancers and heart disease and 90 per cent of type-2 diabetes, are preventable.

Mike Daube is Professor of Health Policy at Curtin and he says the success in reducing smoking shows what can be done in the community with regard to issues such as obesity and alcohol.

Professor Daube was Western Australia’s first Director General of Health and Chair of the National Public Health Partnership, has held a number of senior positions in government and is on a number of boards and committees involving heart health and smoking.

The summit findings will be passed on to the 2020 Summit, to be held in Canberra on April 19 and 20, and also to the new Health and Hospitals Reform Commission and the new National Preventative Health Taskforce.