Australia Reviewing Pet Scan Funding

new-zealand-first-party

Thu Jul 26 2007 12:00:00 GMT+1200 (New Zealand Standard Time)

Australia Reviewing Pet Scan Funding

Thursday, 26 July 2007, 2:56 pm
Press Release: New Zealand First Party

26 July 2007

The Federal Government in Australia is considering funding more PET scanners because their original decision to restrict funding was apparently based on bad information, says New Zealand First health spokesperson Barbara Stewart.

“Funding is being reviewed after the ABC’s 7:30 Report revealed that the original decision to restrict funding may have cost thousands of Australians their health and in some cases their lives.

“Australia has 16 scanners, 10 of them funded by Medicare. With an estimated population of 20 million that equates to one publicly funded scanner for each two million people.

“New Zealand, with a population of just over 4 million, has one privately funded scanner. This means that the vast majority of New Zealand cancer patients without private health insurance are being denied access to equipment which has been described as an indispensable imaging tool for the management of cancer in most developed countries.

“The Australian Federal Health Minister may have egg on his face but at least he is acting to remedy government shortcomings.

“In this country the business case for PET scanning has been turned down by a group of faceless bureaucrats on the basis that it “did not provide adequate justification of additional patient benefit for the additional costs”.

“In other words cancer patients in this country are being denied the best treatment available on purely financial grounds.

“This is nothing short of scandalous and when the consequences of government failure to provide access to this technology eventually become more widely obvious the Minister of Health may end up thinking that his Australian counterpart has got off lightly,” said Mrs Stewart.

ENDS

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