Mesothelioma and diseases related to asbestos exposure have a high count in Australia. Continual initiatives are proposed and discussed to fight the diseases and their causes. However, with such a complex, nationwide problem, Australian officials do not yet see eye to eye on the best way to handle the growing situation.
asbestos Diseases Society president Robert Vojakovic believes a cure could be found soon for mesothelioma if more funds could be focused on research.
He said, “Obviously I’ve been around for the last 32 years and I’ve seen stacks of people dying from diseases – we lose about five people from our organisation every week in Western Australia.”
“My concern was mainly to get more money into medical research. I reckon with 10 or 15 years we’re going to clean up the disease [and] be able to treat it.” He continues, “We are all at risk – it only takes several fibres, one fibre to cause a malfunction or mutate one of your cells and that triggers cellular process to get mesothelioma.”
In agreement with Vojakovic’s focus on research is Bruce Robinson, Director of the National Centre for asbestos Related Diseases, who says Australia is already leading the world in the search for cures and remedies.
Robinson said, “The epidemic of asbestos cancers is continuing to rise, it won’t peak for some time yet, and then it’s going continue for another 40, 50, 60 years.”
“So there are more than 20,000 people expected to die just of mesothelioma, which isn’t the only asbestos-induced cancer.
“And that’s just in Australia – millions are going to die around the world and we think Australia’s is the best place to find a cure so those millions of people can be helped.”
Chris Evans is Australia’s Federal Workplace Relations Minister. Evans suggests heightened awareness and strategies for safe avoidance of exposure throughout the country. He believes this is the better way to reduce growing numbers of asbestos deaths.
“Each of the states have got various bits of information and we’ve got some data collection,” he said. “The Tasmanian Government’s made an initiative recently which will help in that regard in their state, but we do need to pull all the things together to actually make sense of it all and make sure we’ve got priorities.”
This pulling it all together will need to be timely for Australia. As Vojakovic said, “There are more than 10 million people which have been exposed to asbestos in Australia right now.”