Trachoma: our national disgrace

A recent survey conducted by the Indigenous Eye Health Unit at Melbourne University, estimated 20,000 people are at risk of trachoma in Australia, with 5,000 being children. The Roadmap to Close the Vision Gap for Vision produced by Professor Hugh Taylor, the Harold Mitchell chair of the Indigenous Eye Health Unit, states that two-thirds of rote communities surveyed have endic trachoma, with endic meaning over 10% of the population are infected. This rate can be twice as high among children at 25%.The appalling trachoma results in our country are despite the establishment of the Indigenous Eye Health Unit and its 42 recommendations, and despite the previous work of the National Trachoma and Eye Health Program that ran 1976 – 1978 with Fred Hollows at the helm.
Needless to say, Professor Taylor is disappointed by the slow progress since he joined Fred Hollows visiting rote Indigenous communities in the 1970s.
The Indigenous Eye Health Unit at Melbourne University produced The Roadmap to Close the Gap for Vision that benchmarked progress and mapped out a national strategy, with its 42 recommendations for closing the gap on a range of issues including trachoma, diabetes-related blindness, cataracts and vision loss.
“Attention to trachoma has waxed and waned as other priorities are raised, so trachoma has not been on the agenda. Trachoma in children is often unrecognised and older blind people are not seen as a pressing acute priority by busy health services or distant policy makers,” Professor Taylor says.
With what can only appear to be mid-level bureaucratic indifference and ‘fluffing’, funding and action is seingly lost in a maze of accountability between the states and the Commonwealth, Professor Taylor’s vision to eradicate trachoma in our Indigenous population over five years is failing to meet to its objective.
However, Professor Taylor says ‘the glass is neither pty or full’, some good progress is being made in the Northern Territory and Western Australia, along with South Australia recently making some inroads. But most concerning is that in New South Wales – with the largest Indigenous population – and Queensland with the second largest, progress is painfully minute.
Professor Taylor laments: “After making a good start, it is frustrating to see it has taken a needlessly-prolonged amount of time for the Commonwealth and state departments in NSW and Queensland to get things sorted out for the states to do the mapping required, which can establish whether the current identified cases are isolated or whether those cases are indicative of a prevalence of trachoma amongst the entire rote community.”
Professor Taylor regularly meets with the various state representatives to advocate for long overdue action to be taken in NSW and Queensland.
For the full story, refer to the February print issue of Insight.
By Kate Mulcahy, business development manager at Insight.