SWSLHD and Bowral's Health - 64

Troops face mental health risks

• by: Mark Dodd
• From: The Australian
• April 19, 2012 12:00AM

A "PROFOUND" number of Diggers returning from operational deployment in Afghanistan will be afflicted with post-traumatic stress disorder, a senior former army commander has warned.

Major General John Cantwell, who in 2010 served as commander of Australian forces in the Middle East, told the ABC he was concerned the majority of home-bound troops would try to hide the affliction.

The Department of Defence needed to do more to encourage potential sufferers to seek treatment, he told ABC1's Lateline on Tuesday.

His comments followed the announcement on Tuesday by Julia Gillard advancing the timetable for the withdrawal of Australia's 1550 Afghanistan-based troops over the next 18 months.

A total of 26,000 Australian Defence Force personnel have served in Afghanistan since 2004. Since 2001, more than 200 have been wounded in action and 32 killed, most victims of insurgent roadside bombs.

PTSD cases will be most prevalent among troops directly exposed to combat, General Cantwell said.
"We will have a lot of soldiers who have seen a lot of things that they probably wish they'd never seen.

"It's going to mean that you have more people suffering post-traumatic stress disorder and other disorders as a result.

"So it stands to reason we just need to be ready to pick up the pieces and help them get back to a normal life."

The ADF, slow in the past to acknowledge the scope of the problem, is now much better equipped to identify PTSD, said David Forbes, director of the Melbourne-based Centre for Post Traumatic Mental Health.

"The closer you are to the point of threat and the longer it goes on for, there's an increased risk," Professor Forbes said.

"If you are in a combat troop and have had one experience in the course of your deployment, you are probably at the lower risk than a special forces trooper exposed (to combat) on a frequent basis."

However, the closely knit special forces fraternity and their specialised training would help mitigate against PTSD, he added.

SWSLHD and Bowral's Health - 63

Widespread ignorance over antibiotics

• by: Adam Cresswell, Health editor
• From: The Australian
• April 19, 2012 12:00AM

James Best treats Charlie Hutchison as mother Fiona looks on at a medical centre in Summer Hill, Sydney, yesterday Picture: Sam Mooy Source: The Australian

NEARLY half of Australians do not realise that antibiotics kill only bacteria, according to research that suggests widespread ignorance about the drugs may be fuelling the rise of antibiotic-resistant superbugs.

Research by the National Prescribing Service to be released today shows that while more than two-thirds of Australians (69 per cent) understand that overusing antibiotics erodes their effectiveness, less than half (48 per cent) know that failing to complete the prescribed course allows resistance to spread.

Less than one-third (29 per cent) of the 1013 respondents understood that taking antibiotics to combat a viral illness also helped make bacteria more invulnerable to the drugs.
And only 38 per cent knew that taking antibiotics when they were not needed fuelled resistance.
The National Prescribing Service will use the figures to call for greater restraint by both patients and GPs, arguing that the continued spread of resistance within a couple of decades will see a sharp rise in complications and deaths from many operations now regarded as safe.

NPS chief executive Lynn Weekes said mothers with children younger than five appeared to have some of the poorest understanding of sensible antibiotic use, and improving their knowledge was a priority, given they tended to be "health gatekeepers" for the entire family.
"At a summit last year, experts said that by 2030 we will have a situation that looks more like 1830 because antibiotics won't be working against common infections," she said.

The survey shows that while most patients accepted they did not need antibiotics to treat a cold, nearly 80 per cent expected them to be prescribed.

Even when these infections were bacterial, Dr Weekes said antibiotics were not worth taking because they would shave a mere two days from a week-long illness.

James Best, a GP at the Your Doctors practice in Sydney's Summer Hill, said doctors sometimes found it hard to deny an antibiotic prescription to patients who asked for one, particularly if there was a long-standing doctor-patient relationship.
"Or there can be time pressure - it can take time to overcome inappropriate expectations, and sometimes there's a temptation to end the conversation quicker by giving in to the demands," he said.

Fiona Hutchison , whose son Charlie is almost two, said she understood the dangers of overuse and never asked for an antibiotic, but she acknowledged the reassurance a prescription could provide for worried parents.

SWSLHN + SLHN = SSWAHS : Tobacco marketing and use

Smoking out The Australian

April 14, 2011 – 11:56 am, by Melissa Sweet

The Australian newspaper has recently run a series of articles attacking the Federal Government’s cigarette packaging reforms, including one quoting Nobel Laureate Professor Barry Marshall’s reservations about the measures.

Dr Ross MacKenzie, Lecturer in Health Studies at Macquarie University, says we shouldn’t lose sight of the evidence suggesting the packaging will prove to be a major boost for public health.

***

What’s smoking at The Australian?

Ross MacKenzie writes:

Editors at The Australian have made clear their opposition to the Federal Government’s proposals to legislate plain cigarette packaging that incorporates graphic health warnings.

The paper’s Friday 8 April editorial Smokescreen or deterrent? argues that smoking rates have been dropping for decades without this “latest proposal for even more hideous cigarette packaging”, managing to imply that tobacco control legislation enacted to date has played no part in this trend.

The editorial states that cigarette manufacturers should be allowed to present their brands to consumers in much the same way that other legal products are packaged, and suggests that significant price hikes may well deter more smokers than would the proposed packaging regulation. That the government’s 2009 tax increase on alcopops is dismissed in the same piece as a “cynical revenue-grab” is apparently not contradictory.

In The Weekend Australian (In the care of a nanny state, Saturday 9 April 2011), the paper’s legal affairs editor Chris Merrit reveals no such inconsistencies. Plain cigarette packaging is nothing less than a demonstration of the growth of the nanny state in Australia, and an example of social engineering.

Merritt has called on representatives of the Centre for Independent Studies and the Institute of Public Affairs to support his analysis, although he fails to mention that both of these free-market think tanks have consistently opposed tobacco control initiatives, have received funding from the tobacco industry, or that the Institute of Public Affairs has had tobacco industry executives on its board, as described in ASH Australia’s 2010 report Countering Tobacco Tactics.

Given the apparent difficulties in establishing a logical and objective opposition to the proposed legislation, The Australian’s editors must have been delighted to be able to publish the opinions of Dr Barry Marshall on this issue. (Roxon’s gone too far, says Nobel winner. The Australian 11/4/2011). In the report, Marshall is quoted as stating that as it’s not illegal to smoke there needs to be a limit to tobacco control legislation, and that such regulation persecutes smokers.

Dr Marshall’s credentials and contributions to public health are unimpeachable – Nobel laureates are few and far between, after all.

But what the article reports are Marshall’s personal beliefs, not a scientific evaluation of the legislative proposal or its potential impacts. Certainly, many people will find some of the graphic health warnings sickening and extreme, as he describes them, but this is their very point – to remind smokers that the potentially extreme consequences of smoking include numerous types of cancers and other chronic illnesses.

There is a compelling body of research that points to the effectiveness of such warnings on cigarette packs but as no country as yet requires plain packaging, related research on its specific impact has been necessarily experimental.

Perhaps the most revealing indication that plain packs featuring graphic health warnings will indeed prove to be a successful public health measure is that the tobacco industry in Australia has spent millions of dollars fighting the initiative since it was first announced in 2010.

***

PS from Croakey: Readers wanting more background on the rationale for the packaging measures should have a look at the Preventative Health Taskforce’s work in this area.

One Comment

1. Alex H
   Posted April 14, 2011 at 1:43 pm
   

   It boils down to the last paragraph. If it won’t reduce tobacco sales, why would big tobacco fight it so vigorously?

   Companies use brands products to sell more product, I would imagine that any unbiased marketer worth their salt would tell you that removing brands will impact on sales.

   Less sales = less tobacco smoked = public health benefit = successful policy outcome.