The Australian Federal Government scrapped the funding to the Australian National University’s Master of Applied Epidemiology (MAE) program. This group helps Australia’s response to major disease outbreak and will be disbanded at the end of next year. According to Emeritus Professor Robert Douglas who founded this program, this has been responsible for Australia’s response to serious epidemic outbreaks in the past.
The young scientists involved, he explained, spends two years “immersed in disease surveillance and outbreak investigations” around the nation. He added that this program was the United States equivalent of Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Over the past 20 years, about 160 MAE trainees have dealt with 200 epidemics, including SARS, Hendra virus and the swine flu. Professor Douglas added, “When there was a SARS outbreak, it was our team of students, led by the teachers from ANU, who were put into the field across Asia to both help identify what was happening and identify mechanisms for terminating exposure.”
Recently the MAE was banded with broader Public Health Education and Research Programs for funding allocation which had reached its expected end and was not to be renewed. Professor Douglas warned that Australia will soon be ill-equipped to deal with epidemic outbreaks. He is seeking an alternative source of fund for the program. Its loss he warns would “leave Australia vulnerable at a time when increasing population movements, changing climate and other pressures increase the likelihood that we will face new pandemics and the re-emergence of old ones”.
Prof Douglas raised these concerns in an article published in the latest edition of the Medical Journal of Australia.
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