Members of the federal Cabinet and Treasury officials who are finalising the 2023-24 Australian Budget have been urged to spare the funding set aside for the forthcoming Australian Centre for Disease Control.
The call from the Public Health community comes in the wake this week of a consultant's report summarising responses to the Australian Government's Role and functions of an Australian Centre for Disease Control (CDC) consultation paper.
Labor promised the Centre before the 2022 election, and have said it is due to begin operating in early 2024. The Centre's responsibilities will include ongoing pandemic preparedness and future infectious disease outbreaks, as well as preventing chronic diseases.
"There's a lot of goodwill toward the ACDC by people working in public health and wider health communities," said retired former Chief Health Officer for NSW, Dr George Rubin.
"We all want it to succeed to ensure fewer people get sick, and there's less demand on our troubled health care system. We're speaking up because we want the Centre to have its best possible chance of life, and it is too important an entity to have its funding trimmed before it's been able to work.
"It needs to have a budget in the hundreds of millions of dollars, not tens. Its successes will be in results over the long term, such as in increased longevity, and a higher quality of life and wellbeing."
Public health experts have drafted a Manifesto for an Australian Centre for Disease Control.
What problems does an ACDC solve? Infectious disease outbreaks like COVID-19 are not over, and there will be new outbreaks and health inequity growing. Chronic diseases like cancer, heart disease and diabetes are growing, and the cost of health care is expanding unsustainably. More than 35% of that burden is preventable. The ACDC needs to put the brakes on the accelerators of ill health.
Why is it better than what we have now? The ACDC will reduce duplication of effort across nine governments. It will unite the best expertise to advise on the best course of action to prevent disease, and to respond to outbreaks. It will have the best information capture, analysis and reporting systems to ensure all decisions are based on the best possible evidence and intelligence. It will make clear who is responsible for what. It will lead implementation of the National Preventive Health Strategy, strengthen our biosecurity settings and capacity to respond to bioterrorism.
