MEMBER for Mallee and Shadow Assistant Minister for Regional Health, Dr Anne Webster, is urging people in her electorate, and the wider community, to be aware of the high importance of skin cancer checks as she prepares to undergo surgery next week for a potential skin cancer detected on her face.
This Friday is global #DontFryDay, and Dr Webster said she would like to see the day as a call to action to raise awareness of skin cancer prevention and to encourage everyone to protect their skin.
Australia has the highest skin cancer rate in the world, according to the World Cancer Research Fund, with two out of three Australians diagnosed with some form of the disease before the age of 70.
Dr Webster said about 2000 Australians died annually from the disease, even though skin cancer was one of the most common but preventable cancers.
“Men are also about two times more likely to die from skin cancer than women,” Dr Webster said.
“My concern, as the Member for Mallee, is that the latest data from the Cancer Atlas shows that while skin cancer detections in my hometown of Mildura are low at 25 per cent below the national average, our excess deaths are 34 per cent above the national average.
“You can only put together that we are not diagnosing because we don’t have services to do so.
“The problem is that we will continue to have high morbidity rates in the regions because we don’t have the health care services that we should”.
Swan Hill, Kerang, Cohuna, Sea Lake and a few other centres are lucky to have visiting services such as the Lions Club Lions V Districts Cancer Foundation skin cancer and awareness unit and skin scanning specialist practices such as Your Skin Scan.
Sharon Hudson heads up the private practice that receives no external funding from either state or federal governments travelling around to regional centres as far afield as Broken Hill from her Melbourne base.
Ms Hudson is an experienced nurse and will attain the qualification of nurse practitioner within the coming weeks, which will allow her to undertake some of the roles of a doctor such as conducting biopsies.
She said they were very busy when they visited the region.
“I started off just doing one day and there are now two of us and if it isn’t every month, it is definitely two out of every three months in the Mallee,” Ms Hudson said.
“We have seen thousands of patients in the area and we find stuff every day on a lot of people.
“I was blown away by the Mallee area: the amount of patients and the wait lists.
“There is a strong demand for the service.
“Our lists are created in September and October for the following year.
“These people need these services and they need to know that people are going to come back and look after them”.
Dr Webster said while having such services was very useful and helpful, not having a dermatologist available was problematic.
“Within our regions we need to have our specialists and more GPs, because GPs also check on a regular basis,” Dr Webster said.
“Obviously we have GPs retiring and we are in a pretty distressing situation right now.
“Specialists are private businesses so they can choose to set up and put their shingle on the door wherever they decide to.
“From my point of view it is about making sure there are enough incentives to come out to the regions.
“I think we have got ourselves into a serious problem where too many hospitals in the regions are relying on agency nurses and locum doctors that are fly-in, fly-out.
“On the surface that might appear to be working for everyone but clearly the red holes we are now operating from is a big problem.
“There are serious issues with our health system, there are no two ways about it.”
Dr Webster wrote to Minister for Health and Aged Care, Mark Butler, last June advocating for Mildura to receive a state-of-the-art Vectra scanning machine using 92 cameras to produce a 3D body image to detect and monitor potential lesions.
“I want to ensure Mallee residents see the benefit of that downward trend, given our closest scanner is Bendigo,” Dr Webster said.
“The Vectra scanner potentially also offers hope across the tri-state Victoria–New South Wales–South Australia border region.”
