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Professor Ian Wronski, James Cook University (JCU)
pro-vice-chancellor for medicine, urged both of Australia’s primary political
parties to commit funding to JCU’s Australian Institute of Tropical Health and
Medicine in support of enhanced response to an influx of TB and other tropical
diseases from Papua New Guinea (PNG). According to Wronski, thousands of
political asylum seekers have been travelling illegally across the
four-kilometer Torres Strait that separated PNG from Australia’s northernmost
territories. AusAID estimated 14,749 new TB diagnoses in PNG annually and
reported that PNG had the highest TB burden in the Pacific region.
Wronski recommended a “massive escalation” in disease
surveillance in the coastal area to prevent TB from becoming established in the
Torres Strait and mainland Australia. The Queensland government already has
committed $42 million to infrastructure and projects of the Australian
Institute of Tropical Health and Medicine, which will be based in Townsville
and will have offices in Cairns and Thursday Island. Total cost for the
institute would be $116 million. Plans called for the institute’s scientists to
study the prevention and cure of TB, dengue fever, rabies, and other emerging
diseases.
