Health Report - Separate Stories Podcast

About 40,000 Australians have a stroke each year, and swift diagnosis is vital. A pilot study in Melbourne brings the critical parts of stroke treatment directly to patients in a specialised ambulance called a mobile stroke unit.

The Australasian Skin Cancer Congress has been discussing how best to treat the rise in melanoma incidence.

Monkeypox virus is classified as an Orthopoxvirus—one which uses mammals as host. Humans are protected against it by the smallpox vaccine, but becoming more susceptible to monkeypox now due to less people being vaccinated, and waning immunity from the vaccine.

We host a pre-election health discussion with 4 experts talking about the pressing issues. What are the most pronounced problems, and what health questions have not been raised at all?

Doctors at Royal Darwin hospital struggle to communicate with Aboriginal patients, but a podcast featuring Aboriginal elders answering doctors’ questions aims to help better deliver culturally safe care.

Men are rightly the focus when we talk about prostate cancer, but the disease and its treatments can affect their relationships as well—and many partners find they’re unprepared for the aftermath of a man’s prostate cancer diagnosis.

In Australia there's great disparity in the risk of dying before your time, when compared with the average age at death. The risk is called premature mortality, and has been mapped on to federal electorates.

Many Australians experience blindness and severe vision loss because of a condition called Age Related Macular Degeneration. Some of them are able to have the progress to blindness slowed or halted by eye injections of a medication to stop blood vessels proliferating—but the cost of it to taxpayers is growing.

An article in The Medical Journal of Australia recently describes a disease claimed to have increased exponentially in the last 20 years. It's called Eosinophilic Oesophagitis, and can be mistaken for regular indigestion or acid reflux.

Opioids are a group of morphine-like drugs which are used to control pain. In Australia we haven't experienced an opioid disaster similar to the United States, but Australia has had problems.

The next pandemic may arrive because of climate change. A paper in the journal Nature describes the situation of animals moving to different habitats, where they meet new animals and then share their viruses. New viruses could emerge and affect humans.

It's expected now that we will generally live longer, but what really interests people is how to spend their longer life in good health—and what to do now in order to set a good foundation.

Around one in six Australians are living with tinnitus. So what causes it and what can be done to help?

For a cancer diagnosis, it's sometimes not known for sure which chemotherapy drug will work best. Clinical trials have helped to narrow the options for common cancers but even then, one drug won't always suit everyone. With the more rare kinds of cancer there may not be drug trial information to consult. To guide treatment, there's growing research on potential treatments using animal 'avatars'.

Many people are waiting for an organ donation and some of them may die before a suitable organ is found. Some researchers think that in the near future we will be able to grow organs in animals to be safely transplanted into humans. This healthcare potential raises ethical questions and we need to assess where we stand on such technological change. The first of two features about medicine's use of animals for organ and tissue transplantation. This program was originally broadcast in October 2021.

New variants of the COVID-19 virus continue to appear, and especially as there are low income countries with low levels of immunisation—and so high levels of circulating virus. The 2022-23 Australian Budget allocated A$85 million to COVAX, the international program for delivering COVID-19 vaccines particularly to low income countries. Is it enough? This week the German Government will host a meeting of international leaders who aim to raise US$5.2 billion ($7 billion AUS) for COVAX and fund a major push to ramp up vaccine coverage.

Doctors, nurses and other health professionals look after you and keep you as healthy. But despite Australia's relative good health, compared to other countries, it has major problems with general practice. By international standards we are probably overproducing medical graduates, but not enough are going into general practice and certainly not enough into rural and regional areas.

Researchers at the University of Sydney have reviewed multiple global studies on common painkillers and found that they have a marked effect on our resistance to infection—which is sometimes bad and sometimes good—and more studies are needed on possible alternatives for pain management. Some of these medications could also reduce our response to a vaccination—especially if they're taken ahead of one. Some good news though is that—in some studies—aspirin can reduce the disease burden of tuberculosis.

Primary aldosteronism (PA) is a hormonal cause of high blood pressure where the adrenal glands make too much aldosterone. It's treatable and there's a simple test.

If you have elevated blood pressure and lifestyle controls are not helping - so you need medication - by how much should pressure be reduced? Too low and you might overly restrict blood supply to the brain.