Page 1591 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 19 May 1993
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There is obviously a desperate need for a separate registry in the ACT. Some discussion has already taken place on whether it would be best to have an employee of ACT Health or a dedicated employee of the ACT or, for that matter, the New South Wales Cancer Council collate the statistics for the ACT. This decision would be for the Government to make. Whichever it is, the Government must address the needs of Canberra and be independent from New South Wales. We need to make a decision, and we really need to make that decision now. To my knowledge, there have been discussions about a cancer registry in the ACT since before self-government. Quite honestly, putting it off any longer is not acceptable.
Notification of cancer has been compulsory in New South Wales since the Health Act was amended in 1985. As I have mentioned, there is no requirement to report cancer in the ACT. Every other State in Australia has mandatory reporting, and every other State in Australia has a cancer registry. Canberra needs a Canberra registry, Madam Speaker. Voluntary reporting in the ACT is deficient, because private hospitals and pathologists do not necessarily report cases of cancer. While the public hospitals voluntarily report cancer cases, they do not necessarily report every case. Because of this, any cancer statistics in the ACT, as I have already said, fall short and are therefore inaccurate and somewhat unreliable.
The New South Wales Cancer Council registry collects whatever data is available from the ACT, but this is done because so many people in New South Wales are treated in the ACT. The New South Wales council is naturally keen to collect all data which relates to New South Wales, so on that basis they are happy to collect the ACT data that they have collected. From time to time the New South Wales registry produces reports on the ACT; but, as I have said, the last report was for the period 1978 to 1982. This means that the latest detailed information available on cancer in the ACT is 10 years old, and that is simply not good enough for ACT Health to be able to plan ahead in any meaningful manner.
Madam Speaker, how can we plan for future treatment levels, for education and for requirements for this disease if we do not have accurate figures upon which to base our future planning? How can we expect to go anywhere near getting it right? This week we have heard many comments about the Government's 2020 plan, and I am sure that we will hear some more tomorrow. But the comments in that statement about cancer and about future directions really beg the question of how. How can we know what direction to take? To know what direction to take we need to know the trends, to make provisions not only for treatment but also for education and for the analysis - the epidemiology - of what we are going to do about cancer in the future.
The increasing incidence of cancer will inevitably cause a burden on our health services. A cancer registry, with mandatory reporting of cancer, will provide the basis of meaningful forward planning. To facilitate the compilation of accurate and complete records, the legislation in the ACT must ensure complete coverage of the entire population. Comprehensive cancer registration in the ACT would provide the data to facilitate the accumulation of information on trends, provide a basis for the provision of cancer related health support services, enable the monitoring of community cancer prevention measures, provide for the epidemiological research on the causes of cancer and yield information to enhance cancer education.
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