The current national health reform agenda has ignored public health and focused on addressing problems with acute care and the hospital system, according to an article in the Medical Journal of Australia.

Prof Raina MacIntyre, Professor of Infectious Diseases Epidemiology and Head of the School of Public Health and Community Medicine at the University of New South Wales, expressed concern that public health had been ignored in the national health reform agenda.

Prof MacIntyre said that despite various organisations and State and Territory governments highlighting the gaps in the national health reform juggernaut, public health was still the invisible man in a reform agenda that was very much focused on addressing the problems in acute care and the hospital system.

"In public health we know there is a critical shortage of epidemiologists and biostatisticians to fill the need for our most basic functions, yet this is another glaring omission in the national health workforce agenda," Prof MacIntyre said.

"Perhaps the success of public health in Australia over more than a century explains why it is now invisible.

"Until the health system in Australia is addressed as a whole, with all its essential components integrated and interlinked, truly successful reform, with genuine long-term vision and sustainability, will not be possible," Prof MacIntyre said.

The Medical Journal of Australia is a publication of the Australian Medical Association.

Source:

Medical Journal of Australia