TRANSCRIPT 🔗
00:00:00
Speaker 1: There's a couple of big questions knocking around at the moment with regard to one disease that we're quite familiar with and another we're just learning something about. Let's start with measles. We've got the Deacon University's Distinguished Professor and Chair in Epidemiology, Catherine Bennett on the line. Professor Bennett, good morning to you.
00:00:18
Speaker 2: Good morning.
00:00:19
Speaker 1: So measles seems like it's on the march around the globe. Does what's happening elsewhere present much of a threat to us here in Australia.
00:00:27
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely. We saw in twenty twenty five three times the measles cases we normally expect to see in Australia, three times what we saw in twenty four. Most of those cases were imported, and as rates change around the world, the chances of someone becoming infected when they travel from Australia and visit other countries has really gone up. So a lot of the cases are still people who picked the virus up overseas. But we've also in Australia, like other countries, seen a gradual decline in the number of people who have measles vaccination shops when they're children and therefore are protected. It's a really effective vaccine, but if your number's dropped, the chances of someone bringing the virus back into the country and coming across someone who's suceptible because they're not vaccinated goes up. So for the first time, we're also staying arise in that local transmission, so someone coming home and then mixing with other people, including people who are not protected by a vaccine, and then we see local outbreaks. So it's still mainly imported cases, big outbreaks in places like Bangladesh, but a number of countries in Southeast Asia, India, other countries as well, and of course the US we've heard about their big measles crisis, but places in Europe as well, So we're all at more risk now just because the virus can come home. BA the vaccination is so effective, people who've had two doses very unlikely to pick up an infection.
00:02:00
Speaker 3: The two cases you referred to, Professor Bennett, the one in Bangladesh and the one in West Texas. The West Texas one, from what I read, started with a sort of a religious community that decided that they or rather had long held views about what they saw as the evils of vaccine, vaccines, the one in Bangladesh again, or some batty decision by the government about suspending a certain type of vaccine. How much of this is quite simply just the sort of explosion in nonsense conspiracy theories and the ease with which they can be accessed via the Internet and social media these days.
00:02:43
Speaker 2: There's so much misinformation out there, unfortunately, and where you have a vaccine like the measles vaccine that gives ninety six percent or better protection, it's really disheartening to have vaccine preventable diseases now running through to me is. In Bangladesh, they have had tens of thousands of cases. They have had thousands of really young children infected, too young to have actually been vaccinated anyway, and they are the ones that can become very unwell, and you have deaths associated with this disease. So it really is a concern. As you say, it's often that was the Mennonites in Texas where their outbreak started. It's now spread across forty seven counties in America, so it's now widespread. But you're right, we talk about vaccination rates and being still you know, about ninety two percents in South Australia for example, which is good, but you have pocus in the community where people who decide not to vaccinate for whatever reason, sometimes because they've heard the wrong information, sometimes for religious regions, reasons and so on. But they're more likely to be connected to other people who've made similar choices, and so when someone brings the virus back, it's not ninety percent of everyone they meet who's going to be vaccinated. It might be thirty percent of the people in their circle who are vaccinated. So many more susceptible people, right, because people tend to network with people who have similar views.
00:04:17
Speaker 1: What about huntavirus, Professor Bennett, We've just I think the most people. We've never said the word before until this week with this awful situation on the cruise ship. Three people died as a result of connection with this rodent born virus that's now spread to other places. There's headlines overnight of an air hostess in the Netherlands with a connection to someone who was on board. We know people may have come back to Australia. What level of concern do you have about this spreading as from the perspective an epidemiologist, is this a potential pandemic or there should we can we be reassured that it won't be well.
00:04:53
Speaker 2: They're watching it very closely. The words in the World Health Organization is very low risk still for the rest of the world. Some of the cases that they're monitoring people who were on a flight with someone who'd got on board was too unwell to travel, turned out they have the handa virus and came off the plane that they're the people they're monitoring. One of those people did become unwell, but so far we haven't had those secondary cases. In the exposed people. The initial symptoms are flu like, so that's the trouble trying to sort out what might be an infection, but it's actually quite hard to pass and unusual for it to pass person to person, but that seems to be what's happened. In this case. It was a husband and wife. Initially they believe they might have been exposed whilst food watching before they got on the cruise ship. The doctor who treated them became unwell, but it really does take quite close contact, and so at this stage we've now had a rolling outbreak that's gone on for nearly six weeks since this person would have boarded and becoming slowly becoming infectious and saying fully, today we only have those eight suspected or confirmed cases, but absolutely they need to watch it. But it's not the same risk of you know, someone being on a plane and everyone being at risk. It'd be quite unusual to see people who had more casual contact to be considered high risk, and so at the moment, everyone who's been in close contact will be followed to make sure that they're not a risk to other people around them or when they do travel home.
00:06:30
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, people really need to listen to people like you more on this, Professor Bennett, because if there's a sentence that sets my teeth on engineering, people go, yeah, I like to do my own research. Well, can you please show me your PhD and explain why you know more about vaccinations than Professor Catherine Bennett. Thank you for joining us this morning, and we'll talk to you again, hopefully,