Anger over 8-year wait for surgery

MORE than 1500 patients from across Queensland face a wait of up to eight years for operations. The Australian Medical Association says hundreds of those waiting for ear, nose and throat surgery at the Royal Brisbane Hospital may never be treated. Patients are not being told the likely wait and many give up waiting and seek private treatment.

People with the longest waits are those classified as Category 3 patients - needing operations to fix sinus problems and recurrent tonsillitis. They are constantly pushed to the bottom of the list while surgeons treat more urgent cases. State president of the Australian Medical Association Zelle Hodge said the waiting time had blown out due to a lack of resources. She said 1500 patients were waiting for surgery. "People aren't told by the hospital how long the waiting list is and I think when they eventually find out they just don't believe it," she said. "Even I find it boggling to think of an eight-year wait, but it is true. "Although people will move up the waiting list, they keep getting pushed down again because of new urgent cases that keep coming in. "Unfortunately the Royal Brisbane looks after the majority of ear nose and throat patients in the state so that makes the situation worse. "Many people give up waiting and seek treatment from private hospitals, while others who can't afford to do that will continue to wait and never get their operation."

Queensland Health says that it has reduced waiting times for patients classified as urgent and life threatening cases. In January there were 187 patients waiting longer than the clinically recommended time of 30 days, compared with 360 in October last year. But figures also reveal an increase in semi-urgent and non-urgent patients waiting longer than the target times. A quarter of semi-urgent Category 2 patients now wait longer than the target of 90 days, and more than one third of Category 3 non-urgent patients are waiting longer than the recommended 365 days. The total number of patients waiting longer than recommended is 10,200.

The Queensland Cancer Council said even cancer patients were being forced to wait too long. Coalition health spokesman John-Paul Langbroek said that Queensland Health performed fewer operations than the public health system in other states. "ENT is failing patients anyway, but to be saying eight years to people, well they might as well be saying they can't provide the service at all," he said. Queensland Health said emergency surgery must always take priority over ot,her surgery.

The above article by HANNAH DAVIES appeared in the Brisbane "Sunday Mail" on March 18, 2007




Another lurch to the Right from Australia's Left

Labor is to overturn its historical opposition to the Telstra privatisation as part of a broader pitch to boost its economic credentials ahead of the election. In a move which will upset sections of the Left - and the key communications union - Kevin Rudd is poised announce the big policy change in Canberra.

Labor is expected to announce plans to invest around $5 billion in broadband services using some of the proceeds from Telstra, which are currently held in the Government's Future Fund. The historical shift recognises that Telstra has already been effectively privatised, although a large slab of the Commonwealth's shares remain locked away in the Future Fund.

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Why governments should run schools -- NOT

A cautionary tale from the Australian State of NSW

PRINCIPALS have resorted to conducting a survey of up to 300 public schools to uncover a 10-year backlog of maintenance problems that the NSW Education Department has been fighting to hide. Public schools have been forced to put up with 10 years of stinking, blocked toilets and threadbare carpets and four years of termite infestation and raised asphalt in playgrounds, the survey by the Public Schools Principals Forum has found.

The State Government is refusing to release a document which reveals how school maintenance programs were suspended at a time it was pouring $1.6 billion into the Olympic Games. In a document called the Asset Maintenance Plan, written in 1998, the Education Department estimated the cost of repairs needed in schools around the state and rated them in order of priority. But nine years later the department still insists it is secret and has refused repeated freedom-of-information requests to release it, and rejected the Herald's request last week.

When asked whether money had been diverted from school maintenance and capital works to the Olympics, the Minister for Education, Carmel Tebbutt, said it was a "popular theory". She admitted that repairs had been delayed to make way for other priorities within the state budget over the past 10 years. And she acknowledged that school maintenance was a problem with "a backlog we haven't managed to get on top of". "It has caught up, and we need to address it. That's why we have put in an extra $120 million over four years on top of our existing commitment," she said.

The department refused to release the Asset Maintenance Plan, 1998-2003, after The Sun-Herald lodged a freedom-of-information request for it in 1999. It claimed then, as it did last week after the Herald lodged another request, that the document was exempt because it had been prepared for submission to cabinet.

In 1999, Brian Chudleigh, then the chairman of the Public Schools Principals Forum, raised concerns about the poor physical state of public schools and questions about how much maintenance spending for schools had been put on hold to build Sydney's Olympic stadiums. Mr Chudleigh, who was principal of Robert Townson Primary School, said it was "the best-kept secret in town". "All principals were told back then was that there is no money for school repairs," he said. "We invested millions in the Olympics and perhaps that's why so much of the school infrastructure has been allowed to run down."

The president of the Secondary Principals Council, Jim McAlpine, said the public should know how much money earmarked for education had been spent on the Olympics.

Mr Chudleigh, once again the chairman of the Public Schools Principals Forum, which conducted the survey, said principals were insulted by the low priority the Government had given to basic repairs. Last week the Government pledged $158 million over four years on equipping each school with an interactive whiteboard. It will spend an extra $120 million over four years to tackle maintenance problems. "It is no good to put icing on the cake like whiteboards when we don't have the fundamentals in place," Mr Chudleigh said.

According to the survey of principals, Blaxland Primary School in the Blue Mountains has put up with leaking roofs since 2004 and Kempsey High School has been battling termites for close to four years. Newbridge Heights Primary School says its sewer has been blocked for up to 10 years. Muswellbrook Primary School has complained of leakinging demountables for seven years.

Mr Chudleigh said that at his own school a child had tripped over worn-out carpet and hit their head on a desk. Since the department subcontracted its maintenance about 10 years ago, carpets had become threadbare and painting infrequent. "Instead of replacing carpets, they began patching them with any colour they could get their hands on," he said. Ms Tebbutt said the extra maintenance funding brought the total for maintenance for 2006-07 to $214 million.

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Organic food is no better



ORGANIC food has no nutritional benefit over regular products despite the belief it is healthier and costs much more, scientists say. Shoppers who buy organic often believe they are getting nutritionally superior products - but experts say there is no evidence to support this claim. Research shows most fruit and vegetables on sale in Australia have the same levels of nutrients and no traces of pesticides, regardless of whether they are organic or not.

Jennie Brand-Miller, professor of molecular and microbiological sciences at Sydney University, says many consumers are paying more, mistakenly believing that organic is better. "We need to get the message out there that non-organic produce is genuinely good quality,'' she said. "We have got a lot to gain from eating fresh fruit and vegetables so the best message is eat as much as you like.''

Organic produce is usually more expensive than conventional foods - sometimes double in price. Consultant dietitian Shane Landon said Australian food standards were high, ensuring all produce was safe to eat. "If people do want to pay a bit more to buy organic and have an orange that looks a bit funny that's fine, but I'm not convinced it's healthier,'' he said. A consumer would have to eat truckloads of non-organic food to accumulate any meaningful amount of pesticides or chemicals in their body, he said. And analysis shows some organic produce does contain residual pesticides.

Suggestions of high levels of hormones in chicken have been proven to be an urban myth, as oestrogen has been banned as an ingredient in chicken feed in Australia since the 1960s.

Advocates prefer to eat organic food because it is likely to have travelled a shorter distance from harvest to shop than its non-organic counterparts, therefore making it more environmentally friendly. Professor Brand-Miller said there was some evidence that organic food, which should be produced without the use of pesticides and artificial chemicals, might be kinder to the planet in the long-term. Erin Pearson, a speech pathologist from Oatley, has bought organic food in the past but didn't notice any difference. "I feel the normal stuff is just as good and organic does tend to be more expensive,'' she said

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