Drug-related burden of disease and injury study
Published May 27th, 2007All current Australian studies on the costs of alcohol related burden of disease and injury are seriously flawed because they do not include the economic costs related to Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD).
The number of children/adults in Australia with this condition are currently hidden - they are either not diagnosed or they are mis-diagnosed with ADD/ADHD or one of the autism spectrum of disorders. Why? Because our medical and health professionals have not received training in either recognizing, diagnosing or managing this condition. North America has 70 specially trained FASD multidisciplinary diagnostic teams - Australia has none…so it is not that FASD is rare in Australia but rather it is rarely diagnosed because of lack of professional training and expertise in this particular discipline. The accepted inicident rate for FASD based on studies from other western countries suggest a conservative figure of 1/100 people living with one of the diagnoses that fall under the fetal alcohol spectrum or 1/1000 for those with full fetal alcohol syndrome. Australia’s population is approximately 20 million so that could mean conservatively at least 200,000 individuals living with the effects of FASD. There was a report in The Australian a couple of years ago about a young 13 year old boy from Cairns who has FASD. He has been “in care” for the past six years and is costing taxpayers $350,000 a year for 24 hour professional care and therapy. He is expected to cost taxpayers $3 million dollars by the time he turns 18. They then predict that he will go to jail. One Canadian study has estimated the lifetime cost of FAS to be $1.5 million per person. This amount includes only direct medical, educational and social service costs; it does not include the cost of potential FAS consequences such as loss of productivity, crime and incarceration. So, 200,000 Australians possibly living with FASD multiplied by $1.5 million equals $300 million to be added to the cost of alcohol related harms in Australia. When are Australian policy makers and the government going to get their heads out of the sand and start to deal with this?
Sue Miers
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