Question Time

ROYAL ADELAIDE HOSPITAL, HEPATITIS C

Mr RAU (Enfield) (14:54): My question is to the Minister for Health. What follow-up support and testing is being offered to patients following the positive testing of a health care worker at the Royal Adelaide Hospital for hepatitis C?

The Hon. J.D. HILL (Kaurna—Minister for Health, Minister for the Southern Suburbs, Minister Assisting the Premier in the Arts) (14:54): Over recent days, 30 former patients from the Royal Adelaide Hospital have been identified as at risk of transmission of the virus hepatitis C from a health care worker. Officers of SA Health have been locating and contacting those who can be reached. Only one of the relevant patients remains to be reached, and that person is believed to be in remote Western Australia. I understand that departmental officers have spoken to a member of that person's family. On contact, patients are offered precautionary screening for hepatitis C and support and counselling.

This has resulted after a health care worker at the hospital tested positive for hepatitis C on 18 September and immediately informed hospital management. Using national and international health guidelines, staff at the Communicable Disease Control Branch of SA Health and hospital management, with the Chief Public Health Officer, Dr Stephen Christley, and clinical experts in the field of expertise of the health care worker, have reviewed the activities this health care worker has been involved in over some years.

This is a time-consuming process, as members would understand, but they have come up with a list of 30 patients who might have been at a very small risk (and I emphasise that) of transmission and have been locating and contacting them or their families and GPs over recent days. Screening and counselling have been offered if required. It was considered important that every possible step was taken to ensure that patients were alerted before the matter became public. I have been advised today that so far 13 patients have had testing, with the results showing they have not contracted hepatitis C. Health experts advise that in this case the risk of transmission is extremely low.

I stress that this issue is a medical issue, which is being managed by hospital staff and SA Health. As a medical issue, this matter is being overseen by the state's Chief Medical Officer, Professor Paddy Phillips, who briefed me yesterday, and the state's Chief Public Health Officer, Dr Stephen Christley. Professor Phillips is an eminent and respected doctor who has worked interstate and overseas as well as in Adelaide. Professor Phillips was previously professor and head of medicine at Flinders University, Flinders Medical Centre and Repatriation General Hospital. Before that he held senior clinical academic posts at the University of Melbourne and Oxford University.

This is not a political issue and, as such, it was absolutely appropriate for Professor Phillips to brief the media on what the department had done. Unfortunately, the new opposition health shadow yesterday chose to chase ambulances on this issue. He chose to politicise this issue, claiming a cover-up. He told media yesterday, 'It looks like a cover-up to me. It could be 30 people; it could be 300 people.'

I want to make it absolutely plain to the shadow minister, the media and everyone else that there is no ambiguity whatsoever about this figure. It is 30, as determined by the experts in the Communicable Disease Branch, clinical experts in the relevant field, infectious disease and liver disease experts and the Director of Medical Services from the RAH as well as Dr Christley and signed off by Professor Phillips. By creating the idea that there is a cover-up, by saying that it may not be 30, it may be 300, the shadow minister is saying that the credibility of those honourable people is somehow impugned. He is attacking the credibility of outstanding health workers in South Australia for a political end.

There has been a very robust investigation into determining the list of 30 patients using the most up-to-date information and guidelines available. SA Health is more than happy to provide a briefing to the health shadow to go through this if he so chooses. Can I say to the shadow minister as kindly as I possibly can: it is all very well for him to go around our hospital and health sector saying to people he meets that he is different from Vickie Chapman, 'I am no Vickie Chapman,' or words to that effect. It is okay for him to say that and, I have to say, they like the fact that he is not Vickie Chapman; they do like that. However, he has to carry out those words with actions. He cannot be a hospital chaser in the media and a nice, sensitive, new age guy when he deals with staff from the hospitals, because they will see through it.