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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, First Session (54-1)
2019-07-02 Daily Xml
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Vaccine Research

The Hon. F. PANGALLO (14:54): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before asking a question of the Minister for Health and Wellbeing about vaccine research at Flinders Medical Centre.

Leave granted.

The Hon. F. PANGALLO: A small and local company called Vaxine, headed by acclaimed Flinders University Professor Dr Nikolai Petrovsky, made national and international headlines today for its world-first breakthrough artificial intelligence development of a more effective influenza vaccine, to be trialled not here in South Australia but in the United States where Vaxine derives most, if not all, of its funding for its cutting-edge research work from the American government.

To put Professor Petrovsky and his team into perspective about their standing in the international medical research community, they were the first to develop an effective vaccine for swine flu at the height of that lethal outbreak and hysteria a few years ago. However, while Professor Petrovsky has been quietly going about his brilliant work, under the watch of the previous government and now this one, SA Health bureaucrats cum bean counters have sabotaged and blocked important life-saving clinical trials of flu vaccine and have vowed to remove Vaxine out of its facility at Flinders, despite the incalculable benefits of its work.

Further, because of the lack of support from the Southern Adelaide Local Health Network (SALHN), respected oncologist Dr Ganessan Kichenadasse is now in a position where he will have to return research grants won by Vaxine and abandon trials of a vaccine on patients with terminal pancreatic cancer, 10 of whom have died just while waiting for SALHN approval within the set grant deadline. To put that into context, one patient who received the vaccine through TGA approval showed such a significant improvement that the patient was well enough to get married.

This is not good enough, especially considering the minister himself spoke so highly of the importance of our skilled medical researchers at a recent awards presentation for the Flinders-based medical research foundation. My questions to the minister are:

1. Can he explain why and who made the decision to terminate a vaccine trial that was already in progress, resulting in the patients taking part being placed at significant health disadvantage, causing results to be invalidated and millions of dollars in research to be wasted?

2. Is the minister aware that to terminate a trial without a valid reason is a serious breach of medical and ethical obligations?

3. Can he explain why SALHN continues to block attempts by Vaxine to trial its advanced flu vaccine technology locally at a time when the flu is at epidemic proportions, with 220 deaths, 44 of them in South Australia, along with 19,361 notifications, or 16.8 per cent of the national rate?

4. Is he concerned that dying cancer patients may miss out on an opportunity of a final treatment option to trial a vaccine for one of the most deadly and fast-acting cancers where the survival rate is just 5 per cent?

5. Is he aware that senior staff from the SALHN research office have threatened principal investigators at Vaxine with disciplinary action if they continued to work with Vaxine?

6. Is he aware that SALHN delayed Vaxine's application for the cancer trial because it was not offering a $50 payment to cover incidental expenses when Vaxine was actually offering an opportunity to extend their life?

7. Will the minister now order an inquiry into the conduct of the SALHN research office at Flinders?

The Hon. S.G. WADE (Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (14:59): I thank the honourable member for his question. In relation to research undertaken by Vaxine, I have met with people from the Southern Adelaide Local Health Network linked to Vaxine and their concerns have been raised with me.

Some of the detailed points that the honourable member raised haven't been raised with me, but I have sought further information from the Southern Adelaide Local Health Network. I am, in particular, concerned that some of the parameters for research that SALHN is placing on medical research are not being reflected in other LHNs.

This government is a government that is committed to research because I believe that medical research is not only an opportunity to provide South Australians—and, for that matter, other people around the world—with the benefits of the expertise of our medical researchers here, but it is also a very important underpinning of quality within public health. I have met with representatives of the particular company. I have raised issues with SALHN, and those discussions continue.

The PRESIDENT: The Hon. Mr Pangallo, a supplementary.

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