Australia - Better screening and care for breast cancer sufferers
Article Type: News and views From: International Journal of Health Care Quality Assurance, Volume 23, Issue 4
Keywords: Prevention screening programmes, Breast cancer management, Healthcare technology advancement, Quality healthcare systems
The Australian Government has continued its fight against breast cancer with the announcement that Australian women at risk of breast cancer will be able to be screened by the latest technology.
The Government has already delivered $12 million to the McGrath Foundation to recruit, train and employ an additional 44 breast care nurses. The nurses are now in place and working in predominately regional Australia to provide vital information, care and practical and emotional support to women diagnosed with breast cancer and their families and carers.
In addition, women in the Bathurst region will also have access to state of the art equipment that means they are more likely to have their breast cancer detected and be able to seek early treatment.
Overall, 13 priority projects totalling $10 million will receive funding this financial year and it forms part of a $120 million national upgrade funded by the Rudd Government to enable BreastScreen services in all locations to move to the latest technology.
It is expected that women in the Illawarra region will be next to benefit,with the upgrade to the region’s BreastScreen mobile van set to happen shortly.
As well as providing new mammography equipment, the digital upgrade program will enable electronic transfer of mammography images between services. This will help reduce the time taken for images to be sent from remote locations to major cities for analysis. Radiologists will also be able for the first time to electronically manipulate and magnify the mammography images.
Women aged from 50 to 69 years are invited to have free two-yearly screens for breast cancer. The program has proven highly successful – since its inception, it has been responsible for a 21 to 28 per cent fall in the number of deaths due to breast cancer.
Nonetheless, more than 12,000 women and 100 men are diagnosed with breast cancer in Australia each year.
The BreastScreen mammography equipment upgrade and the valuable work of the McGrath Foundation are only two areas where the Rudd Government is working to improve breast cancer prevention, treatment and support. Other initiatives include:
$168 million for Herceptin®, for metastatic breast cancer;
$31 million over five years to reimburse external breast prostheses for women who have had a mastectomy as a result of breast cancer, providing up to$400 reimbursement to eligible women through Medicare Australia; and
$2.5 million over five years from 2008-2009 to the National Breast Cancer Foundation for a study involving more than 100,000 women, which aims to improve prevention and treatment of breast cancer.
In addition, the Government is investing $560 million in ten best-practice regional cancer centres. The regional cancer centres will aim to improve access and support for cancer patients in rural, regional and remote Australia, and help close the gap in cancer outcomes between the city and the country.
For more information: www.health.gov.au
