Qld. ambulance service in critical condition

The Queensland Ambulance Service has plunged into crisis, with frontline paramedics pleading for more staff and emergency vehicles before it's too late. The Government admits recent ambulance response times have worsened alarmingly and staff morale is poor as many paramedics continue to work up to 14 hours straight - shifts their own Minister described as "killers". In a further blow to the QAS, new Assistant Commissioner Stephen Gough - recruited with much fanfare from Victoria less than a year ago - is on indefinite sick leave.

Last week The Sunday Mail revealed that faulty defibrillators used by paramedics had been linked to the death of a Queensland man, two years after the QAS was ordered to replace cables in similar equipment after the deaths of two other men.

Emergency Services Minister Pat Purcell said last week all the money raised through the ambulance levy (minus administration costs) was distributed to the QAS via the Government's Consolidated Revenue account. But an examination of the QAS annual budget reveals the introduction of the compulsory community tax has not significantly increased funding to the service. In the year before the levy was introduced on July 1, 2003, the ambulance budget was $248 million. In its first year the $88 annual fee, which replaced the voluntary ambulance subscription system and was added to electricity bills, raised more than $96 million - but the QAS budget increased by just $27 million.

The levy, increasing with the Consumer Price Index each year and now $95, is expected to contribute more than $120 million to State Budget coffers this year. The annual budget for the QAS in 2006-07 is $355.7 million. Premier Peter Beattie, when introducing the levy, said the money would not be used for other purposes. "We are not going to take one cent out of this," he said.

But Mr Purcell said it was never intended that the levy would provide additional funds for the QAS. "At no stage was the levy ever intended to increase the Queensland Ambulance Service budget," he said. "The levy instead took the place of other sources of funding like the QAS subscription scheme and user charges." He said the levy funded only a portion of the QAS budget - about 32 per cent for 2006-07. The rest was allocated from the State Budget.

But paramedics, angry over the state of the service and lack of improvement since the levy was introduced, said last week the public should be demanding answers from the Government. "They are being ripped off. The levy is being used to pay for management junkets . . . what is left is used to replace the many frontline troops who have left and ambulances that have broken down," one ambo said yesterday. In a letter to The Sunday Mail, another officer described the state of QAS operations in Brisbane as "disgraceful" and claimed patient lives were at risk. The officers cannot be named because they have been threatened with fines and sacking if they speak out.

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Australian government says IPCC report backs their position

The Federal Environment Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, says the last of the United Nations reports on climate change has confirmed that his Government's policies are correct. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report found that stabilising emissions would cost around 3 per cent of global GDP at most. It also found that emissions must peak within 13 years to avoid a temperature increase of more than two degrees centigrade, and called for urgent political action to address the situation.

Mr Turnbull says the report shows that the Government is heading in the right direction: "There is nothing in there that isn't consistent with our policy," he said. "If you look at the things that they say we should be doing now, they are all things which Australia is leading the world in. "Energy efficiency, we're the first country to phase out incandescent lights, we are leading the world in a campaign to reduce deforestation." ....

Mr Turnbull says Labor's plan to reduce Australia's emissions by 60 per cent by 2050 will cost jobs and have little global impact. "If you put a heavy price on Australia's energy intensive industries, those industries will move offshore and their emissions with them," he said.

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Top service for drug addicts (but not hospitals) in Victoria

DRUG addicts are receiving a "gold-class" syringe service, while the health system fails pensioners and those needing surgery and emergency care. Home delivery of syringes is easier and quicker than for a pizza. Needles and users' kits are sped anywhere in Melbourne -- as late as 11pm -- within minutes. State Budget figures show 6.9 million needles and syringes are on course to be handed out in the year to June -- almost 20,000 a day.

But they show health services falling below targets in such areas as emergency treatment, cancer screening and semi-urgent surgery. The latest hospitals performance report also shows the health system failing to meet targets in several critical areas. Needles were delivered within 22 minutes from Box Hill to Upper Ferntree Gully, 15km away, late one evening this week. A pizza restaurant in Box Hill refused to deliver to Upper Ferntree Gully because it was too far away. A nearby outlet took 35 minutes to deliver.

Syringes were available in the CBD within two minutes of a call to the AIDS Prevention Health Awareness Program's foot patrol, which operates until 11.30pm. Couriers from Box Hill's Community Health Outreach Program Eastern Region delivered 10 syringes, cotton wool and skin cleansing solution to Upper Ferntree Gully. Advice was offered on how to inject illegal drugs. In the CBD, syringes were dispensed in packs of five. Social workers offered $10 to addicts completing a short questionnaire. Handouts under the syringe delivery program are up more than 600,000 on 1999-2000, when the heroin epidemic was at its height.

But health service performance figures for the current financial year released in the Budget show:

ONLY 70 per cent of emergency patients are transferred to a ward within eight hours.

THE number of women being screened for breast and cervical cancer is significantly below target.

SOARING numbers of emergency patients not treated within 30 minutes.

THE number of bed days in high-care homes for the aged has dropped by more than 4000.

Tuesday's Budget also revealed funding shortfalls against poll promises to slash waiting lists, improve emergency treatment and boost ambulance response times.

Opposition health spokeswoman Helen Shardey said Health Minister Bronwyn Pike had failed to protect the public during the recent HIV and nursing home deaths scandals, failed to deliver on election promises and was failing to meet her targets."Bronwyn Pike's list of failures is becoming as long as her surgery waiting list," Ms Shardey said.

A spokesman for Ms Pike said on any benchmark, Victoria's health system was one of Australia's best. "Victoria's hospitals are admitting 300,000 more people a year than they did in 1999," he said.

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Making beer into water?

We know who turned water into wine. Now Australian scientists are going a step further - they are turning wine and beer waste into water to generate electricity.

Miracles aside, man still relies on a lengthy process to make alcoholic drinks that produces tens of millions of litres of waste water a day. Scientists at the University of Queensland have developed a way of recycling that waste twice over. The technology involves sugar-consuming bacteria that "clean" the water and produce energy in the process. After laboratory tests, they are now building a chemical reactor on the site of Australia's largest brewery, Foster's in Brisbane. It is expected to generate enough electricity to power a large household around the clock by using a fraction - about 2,500 litres (550 gallons) - of the 2.5 million litres of waste water the brewery generates each day.

If the venture succeeds, the scientists believe that the technology could be expanded and used at many breweries, wineries and food-processing plants to generate electricity. The potential for electricity generation is enormous. A larger chemical reactor capable of harnessing all the waste from the Brisbane site would produce enough electricity to supply about 2,000 households.

At the heart of the process is a microbial fuel cell - essentially a battery in which bacteria consume rich, water-soluble brewing wastes such as sugar, starch and alcohol. The bacteria release chemical energy from the organic material, which is then converted into electricity. Joerg Keller, leader of the Queensland University project, told The Times: "Waste material is actually a very good source of chemical energy that we can convert into electrical energy or gas energy. "It is, for the first time, possible to generate electricity directly out of the waste that's in waste water."

There are other research projects around the world exploring similar technology but, Professor Keller said, the Queensland project was believed to be the first ready to move out of the lab and on to an industrial site. The 2,500-litre fuel cell to be erected at the brewery will be 250 times bigger than a prototype that has been operating effectively at the university's laboratory for three months.

Asked if he expected that a larger cell would be built to harness the electricity-generation potential of all of the waste water produced by breweries, wineries and food processors, Professor Keller said: "Oh, for sure and that's the next step. "We have to iron out a few issues at this [2,500 litres] scale, obviously, and then hopefully we can take it to a larger scale again." The technology is particularly attractive to brewers and winemakers in drought-hit Australia, where water is becoming increasingly scarce and expensive.

The country's many coal-fired power stations also make the nation one of the world's leading greenhouse gas emitters per capita. The benefits promised by the technology are twofold: it successfully prepares waste water for recycling without using the large amounts of electrical power that traditional treatment systems require. Therefore, it not only saves on electric power use but also generates it. And the water, at the end of the process is good enough to drink, according to Professor Keller, who has sampled it.

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