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https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/commentisfree/2025/apr/09/us-health-funding-measles-australia-must-invest-public-health-system>
"Late one evening I am reflecting on my inpatient list. The first patient, a
middle-aged man, has been admitted with an “all-over” rash.
Since every other patient was sicker, this patient had slipped my mind and I
had left the hospital without seeing him, thus breaking my own rule.
Now, struck by a dreadful thought, I text the medical fellow.
“Could the rash be measles?”
“I don’t think so … ” she replies.
The ellipsis worries me.
In my head, I see a bevy of patients and staff exposed to contagion. Shouty
headlines and public outrage swim before my eyes and I prepare to go in to the
hospital again – better late than never.
My fellow’s second text, “I also ran it past dermatology”, proves no more
reassuring.
She has never seen measles. In fact, I have seen it only once and that too,
with its most feared consequence, disabling encephalitis. To young doctors,
measles is a “textbook” disease, such as scurvy or pellagra. They would be
excused for not even considering the diagnosis – until now.
With an outbreak in parts of the US afflicting hundreds of patients, measles is
back in the news. Almost all the affected are unvaccinated, of which a few have
died.
Hand in hand with measles reporting are the concerns about slashed US funding
for public health measures that threatens to spur the spread of infectious
diseases around the world.
Thanks to the world really being a global village, an infection in Texas or
Tanzania could easily reach Tasmania. Given the giant contribution of US aid
(and intellect) to global public health, the rolling announcements about cuts
to those endeavours have caused a global shiver.
But in challenging times I think that it also pays to understand what we can do
to help ourselves, a philosophy especially relevant to one of the richest
countries on the planet, Australia.
I met a usually measured public health doctor who didn’t mince his words
lambasting my home state Victoria’s management of the Covid pandemic as an
inevitable disaster whose spillover effects were still reverberating five years
later. I would have made less of his comment but for hearing it repeated in
different contexts thrice that week.
His words, coupled with reading this Grattan Institute report, reignited my
indignation or, more truthfully, my guilt at the price society paid for the
country’s complacency about public health."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
