A dollar spent on prevention, saves at least four spent on a cure. The TB strain to our immediate north is a deadly killer strain that currently threatens Queensland; and through it, all of Australia!
Where, given our success eliminating this disease, there's little local immunity; and a catastrophe, just waiting to happen!
Along with currently unnecessary billions needing to be spent trying to remedy a disease, that is all but impossible to cure, largely thanks to people not completing their course of antibiotic medication!
Cerebral malaria is a virtual death sentence, that is coming southward with climate change, and a few millions spent now on R+D, could save billions later.
We conceivably can cure aids, with a combination of currently approved rheumatism and leukaemia medication?
People virtually condemned to die and sometimes through no fault of their own, [deceived wife, needle stick injury, infected blood products etc,] stand a far better chance, if the clinical trials are conducted now, while they are still comparatively healthy; and are clearly not served by being forced to wait, for medication, already approved for other applications; or indeed, the others they might still infect, while waiting for years for an already promising possible cure.
Which by the way, will deprive big Pharma many annual billions!
There are over a million known HIV carriers in just north America alone, with each one spending around an averaged $20,000.00+ annually, on antivirals.
I leave you to do the sums.
Rhrosty.

Australian government did their sums on TB from the north and recently closed the clinics where infected PNG people were coming for treatment.

JF, I think I read a while ago that the TB funding was being transferred to facilities in PNG itself, to try and combat the problem at source - but that might have just been Government spin and creative accounting.

Candide,
You may well be very correct there.
However how could government transfer the good medical people as well? I think those people would have been really sticking their own necks out running the already established clinic in north Queensland?
I think it better to have clinics in PNG and ALSO in far north Qld to prevent sick people coming further south for treatment. Some people have money to afford travelling by air and infecting other people, be it in PNG or on the way to Aus. It may only take one infected person to spread this disease to say Melbourne.
I feel very close to the issue because my father died due to TB when I was about 5 yrs old and I have had to grow up without a father.
My mother later told me my dad thought he caught the TB while travelling in a train.
There is no need to be a doctor to understand TB is best treated in open air conditions that exist travelling by canoe to any suitable clinic with open air, not closed up due to cold, in PNG or far northern Qld.

JF aus, it wasn't the Australian Govt that closed these clinics, but Queensland's. The PNG clinic is a joke, paying little more than lip service to the high sanitation isolation requirements of treating/managing this disease.
They are clearly aware that this is necessary medical treatment, given they were demonstrating it for the cameras, when our reporters were up there, covering the closure of our northernmost clinic.
Sadly, all the good medicine was literally abandoned once they believed the cameras were gone, with sick people wandering around the wards.
And Island hopping sick people remain free to come and go in their tinnies as they please, according to traditional movement, and official PNG/Australia agreement!
Movement, which threatens to move this deadly killer strain onto mainland Australia.
Which will likely cost the Queensland Govt many millions more, than the comparative pittance they were shelling out, for a small northern Island clinic!
Why did they close it?
I believe, to fulfil the myopically focused needs, or the ideological imperative, of conservative bean counters?
Rhrosty.

It may only take one infected person to spread this disease to say Melbourne.
JF Aus,
I'm surprised that hasn't already happened when you watch them come across from Busi or Sigabaduru or Mabadauan to the australian islands where they stay weeks on end enmasse.
People not infrequently jump on a plane to Cairns straight out of PNG. Most however go by dinghy on windy/rainy days when no other boats are out. What you see on Border Security is at airports not out at sea or along remote coastlines. I once talked with a West Papuan who told me he frequently takes people to mainland Australia.
We'd really need some kind of Coastwatch manned by personnel with an interest in protecting Australia not just their Superannuation or etc to stop that.