The revelation today that the Queensland health department has almost seventy spin doctors on the payroll almost defies belief. You can only wonder how the $4 million a year cost of this media management army might be better spent.
South of the border, the NSW health department has its own problems of course, and no doubt has its own army of public relations managers trying to minimize the fallout from the ongoing saga of inquiries into hospital failures.
But in one area the NSW health department deserves praise, and that is for its investment in HIV prevention. This has enabled NSW to buck the trend and achieve stable or falling rates of HIV infections while all other states have recorded significant increases (Victoria for example has seen a 109% increase in HIV at the same time as NSW has had a 4% decrease).
How have they done this? In a series of papers in the journal Sexual Health (link) this month looking at the diverging trends in HIV in Australia, HIV and public health specialists say there is no single reason why NSW is getting it right. They say that the state government has managed to promote good HIV prevention practices among homosexual men by forging good partnerships with local HIV organisations and community groups. In contrast, they say other states such as Victoria and Queensland cut funding to HIV prevention during the 1990s, which saw partnerships flounder and HIV prevention efforts crippled.
One of the reports authors, Professor Christopher Fairley, of the Melbourne Sexual Health Centre, says that if NSW had followed the trends seen in other states it would have expected to see 706 new HIV diagnoses since 1999. In reality NSW has had 325 new cases, and thus the modest investment in preventive health avoided 381 new cases of HIV. In cash terms that works out to just over $30,000 to prevent a new case of HIV, says Prof Fairley.
That kind of good news speaks for itself. How many spin doctors do they need to 'let go' in Queensland to free up funding for those sorts of programs?
