Medicines can kill our health

Speaking to the Pharmacy Guild this year, the Minister for Health and Aged Care, Dr Michael Wooldridge, described himself as the Minister of Sickness. He said he had never truly been a Minister for Health because most of what he and the current health system must do is treat illness, not try to prevent it. He said the Government now encourages GPs to prevent people getting ill in the first place. (Complementary HealthCare Council of Australia Report 2000)

This is what the medical and drug industries have become. The medical has its place in 'disease care' not in health care. They all do research into new medicines (chemical drugs), treatments and procedures to deal with and treat the sick! No thought is given to preventing disease and thus preserving health, let alone building vitality and natural high-level health. Lifestyle education is clearly the most powerful form of preventative medicine and mothers and fathers; prevention is far better then cure! Yet this concept appears to be forgotten and is almost unheard of! 

The cost of health care in Australia is currently $50 billion and escalating. The right public education in lifestyle to build health to overcome disease and stay vibrantly well would reduce this escalating expenditure on health care (which really is disease care) by promoting a healthier population, is the key with minimal cost to the Government. 

Most of it is very negative. In fact, all we read is about their sickness and disease! We continue to read about increasing statistics of childhood diseases and the new medicines, vaccines and treatments being discovered that will treat this and that condition. We also see dearly that while the standard medical approaches can often appear to reduce and 'palliate' the symptoms, they do not really get to the cause of the problem and remove it. The condition very often returns again and again or the symptoms change and it is said that the child then has a different disease and it is then given a different name. 

Here in Australia we have among the highest percentages of childhood diseases in the civilized world. Conditions such as asthma, allergies, recurring infections, ear, nose and throat problems, skin disorders, feeding problems and behavior problems are in epidemic proportion. Almost everyday we hear on the radio, see on television and read in the newspapers about the health crisis in our modern communities. How the hospitals are struggling to keep up to the huge and continually growing demand of people requiring treatment. We have the threat of epidemics arriving on our shores each winter from other parts of the world. We read the warnings to get vaccinated against so many disease conditions. Reading these press releases it is not surprising that people, and particularly parents, live in fear of these diseases and the so-called 'killer bugs' attacking themselves and their children! Note how over the years the headlines are just as dramatic and negative.

• "The world is facing a medical crisis from diseases, which have become resistant to most of the common antibiotic drugs used to treat them," a prominent microbiologist said yesterday.

• "It's only a matter of time until Staphylococcus develops resistance to vacomycin," said Dr Alexander Tomasz, of the Rockerfeller University in New York City. "We are playing a dangerous chess game with these organisms, and we are very dose to losing." 


• Dr Stuart Levy, of Tuff University School of Medicine in Boston, said, "We can give examples of kids left either dead or brain damaged due to a resistant pneumococcus that could have been cured before." (Gold Coast Bulletin 13 May 1994, P7.)  

This winter millions of Australians will receive antibiotics for a cold or influenza, not one cold or flu will be helped, but aid will have been given to the enemy. Each individual so treated will end up harbouring drug-resistant micro-organisms. (Gold Coast Sun, July 20,1994•) 

A doomsday form of the deadly hospital disease, golden staph, is heading Australia's way. A leading world researcher into the bug has warned that the development in Australia of a golden staph strain particularly resistant to the wonder drug, Vancomycin, is 'only a matter of time'. Veterans Affairs Medical Center at Pittsburgh in the United States, said the bug's presence in Australia would herald 'a public disaster'. There had been five cases of the doomsday strain so far - one in Japan, one in France and three in the US. "I don't think there has been any from Australia," he said. "But there's no doubt this is going to happen." (Sunday Mail June 20, 1999, P32.) 

There was a strong potential for a flu epidemic on the Gold Coast. (Gold Coast Bulletin, July 7,1996.) 

Severe strains of flu have triggered a medical crisis south of the border which looks set to spread to the Gold Coast in what has been tipped as "the worst in years." Dr Alan Hampson, deputy director of the World Health Organization, said Brisbane had been the first to 'take off with the flu epidemic this year. (Gold Coast Bulletin, July 6-7,1996.) 

Why did 20 million - or maybe 100 million people die from the flu of 1918? Should a similar pandemic strike now, millions would die, more than are killed in a year by heart disease, cancers, strokes, chronic pulmonary disease, AIDS and Alzheimer's combined. (Courier Mail, Jan 22, 2000, P9.) 

Up to 2000 Australians risk dying of flu this year if they don't get vaccinated, an influenza expert said yesterday." (The Daily Telegraph, March, 2001, P.7.) 

'Thousands of Australians suffer disability or disease after treatment in hospitals for other illnesses'. In a study accepted for publication by the International Journal for Quality in Health Care, it is reported that as many as 18,000 deaths and 50,000 cases of harm to patients occurs each year in Australia as a result of mistakes in hospitals. And that 10% of hospital admissions were linked to medical errors or hospital accidents. Spokesman for the National Expert Advisory Group on Safety and Quality in Australian Health Care said that health care 'had a serious problem'. (Front page of Courier Mail, November 30,2000, P 1, 2.) 

Any day in hospital is a bad day, but Wednesday could be fatal. Wednesday is the day you are most likely to become the victim of medical error, according to a report commissioned by the Australian Council for Safety and Quality in HealthCare. The report, 'Medical Errors Action Group', says that of almost 3000 complaints involving preventable patient deaths since 1994, 765 involved incidents on a Wednesday. (The Australian, Wednesday March 14, 2001, front page.) 

The Federal Government has stepped up moves to curb the overuse of antibiotics to try to reduce the spread of drug-resistant 'superbugs'. Health Minister had called an emergency summit of medical, agricultural and consumer experts to develop a strategy to fight the spread of deadly diseases and drug-resistant bacteria. He is very concerned about the extremely high use of antibiotics in this country. A new report warned against Australia's world-leading use of antibiotics on humans and cited evidence of resistant bugs being passed on from the food supply. (The Courier Mail, 21 March 2001, front page.) 

It is clear to see indeed, the medical system is having a battle keeping up not only with 'fighting diseases' but also in caring for the people whom they treat.