Partial Transcript - Media Conference - Dr Kerryn Phelps, AMA President
PHELPS: Hello, everyone. I think you'll agree it's been a very impressive and exciting national conference for the Australian Medical Association, and I believe that we have set the agenda for the Association for, certainly, for the coming year, but I think well into the future. I think some of the highlights, if we look at them, are our new policy directions on Indigenous health, our new policy directions on complementary medicine, public hospital funding and alternatives to the current acute care model, and medical indemnity insurance and looking at ways of responding to the crisis. I think, with these issues, we will be able to move on with the medical profession, led by the AMA, taking the lead and helping debate in Australia, and I'm very pleased to take any of your questions.
JOURNALIST: I'd like to ask you, Dr Phelps, the Victorian Sports Minister, today, has announced there will be brain scans for boxers. I know the AMA has been extremely vocal on this issue. Is this enough, or is this to go at least part of the way to make this sport somewhat safer?
PHELPS: It's not nearly enough. I think it's a very welcome recognition of the problem for boxers, particularly in longer-term careers, and for their brains. Now, you don't have to be knocked out. You don't have to have an acute head injury for you to be getting brain damage, and this is a recognition of that. How useful it is just to monitor brain damage as it occurs, in the short-term, I don't know. We'd have to really talk to our neurosurgery colleagues about that measure. I'd like to hand over to Dr Mudge, who's also been looking at this issue.
MUDGE: Yes, look, I Chair the Ethics Committee, as you know. The neurosurgeons tell me that MRI will be of help in terms of picking up the damage but, of course, we're talking about damage that's already occurred, and we're still talking about a sport whose primary objective is to produce brain damage in the opponent. And we'd still have to call for it to be banned. But, by the same token, we welcome any steps which may make it safer. It would be nice if the MRIs were yearly, instead of three yearly, and I guess there is the question of whether there will be a rebate for MRI at all, come the 30th June, but that's another issue.
JOURNALIST: Doctor, they're also considering …… it would mean they wouldn't allow someone to box if they had a predisposition to brain injury.
MUDGE: Well, again, it's a bit like deciding that women shouldn't box, instead of men or the predisposed to injury shouldn't box. I mean, if the blessed sport is dangerous then why is anybody doing it? We really need to achieve in society a general view that says, 'well, we don't want to go and watch people beat each other's brains out now'. Just as we don't go to the Colosseum anymore, now. I understand that the current emperors would find it difficult to ban the Games, but we would still have to call for that, I think.
JOURNALIST: So, Dr Phelps, can I ask you, does the AMA then stand by its original call for boxing to be banned?
PHELPS: The AMA absolutely stands by its call to have boxing banned. It's a sport that is indefensible, and I think that the boxing fraternity, for coming up with these sorts of interim solutions, is fighting for its life because I think its days are numbered.
JOURNALIST: Dr Phelps, I wonder if I can ask you about the public hospital survey and the incredibly damning attitudes amongst health workers to the system, and it's a lot worse incentive to go, and not much help about in the next five years, or the next Medicare agreement, for that matter.
PHELPS: People working in our public hospitals have had enough - that has absolutely been confirmed by our survey of public hospitals where they are talking about the hours that they work, the frustrations of not being able to treat patients with the quality and the care that they would like to be able to because they just don't have the resources. They are talking about outdated equipment, they're talking about frustrations of the way the whole system is working with the current system of funding and it is high-time that both State and Commonwealth Governments took this issue right up to Government level, made sure that there was appropriate coordination between the State and the Commonwealth, made sure that the health workers are listened to and put proper resources into our public hospitals. They're just starving at the moment. And, unless that funding goes in, and the recommended funding level of the Senate Affairs References Committee last year was $900 million over two years to just keep the public hospitals above water. It's not asking too much and I think it is achievable. But I do think we have to have a commitment from our Governments to support our public hospitals - it's what our patients demand, it's what our health workers are saying is necessary, and it is achievable.
JOURNALIST: Has there been any development on the apology from the Health Minister at this stage?
PHELPS: Well, I guess it's Sunday, and we've got to allow Ministers the occasional day off. We will be waiting to see whether we get a response tomorrow.
JOURNALIST: Are you optimistic?
PHELPS: I don't know that this Government has a fabulous record for saying sorry. But we certainly live in hope, and I think that the appropriate response would be an apology for the things that have been said which were clearly inaccurate, clearly untrue, and quite potentially damaging.
Ends