Paediatric Cochlear Implant Program

Mrs HURN (Schubert) (14:29): My question is to the Minister for Health and Wellbeing. Has the minister or SA Health written to all families who received cochlear implant care at the Women's and Children's Hospital over the past decade? If not, why not?

The Hon. C.J. PICTON (Kaurna—Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (14:29): As I explained to the house previously, when this was raised with the Women's and Children's Health Network last year they undertook an internal review and looked at children who were part of their program and contacted those families. When it became apparent the scale of children who were affected, not only are we proceeding to this independent review but we have also increased the scope of who we are looking at, and been going back to 2006.

My advice is that those families have been contacted. Certainly, if there is a family that the member is aware of who hasn't, I would be very keen if she could contact us. I will make sure that they can be contacted as part of this process because we want to leave no stone unturned in terms of being able to make sure that we can assist families uncover if there are particular issues that go back a number of years. Obviously, looking all the way back to 2006, we are looking at what is the broader scope of families that we can potentially try to see if there are any issues that have occurred.