00:00It's one of the oldest diseases known to man, but this year the NT has seen a case of leprosy.
00:09Most people would have thought that leprosy was eradicated in this country a century ago,
00:14but here we are still having a case of leprosy.
00:16People that live in overcrowded environments are perhaps at greater risk.
00:20Leprosy is hard to spread and today it's easily screened and cured, meaning it's now rare in Australia,
00:26leaving many questioning how it's still being contracted in 2024.
00:31We should be aiming for no leprosy cases in Australia and beyond that in the world.
00:36It's not because people aren't clean themselves or dirty,
00:40it's because of the conditions that they're forced to live in and there's no alternative.
00:46The government says it's acting to address severe overcrowding
00:49through a $4 billion commitment to build more affordable homes,
00:53but the community health sector is struggling to deal with the impacts of poverty on the front line,
00:59with successive real cuts to NT grant funding.
01:02We're probably losing around three nurse positions every year to accommodate that,
01:09and that means nurses who aren't focusing on the future.
01:12The NT's last leprosy case was detected in 2021,
01:16but so far this year there have been five cases nationally.
01:20Behind me is the NT's former leper colony,
01:23where mostly Aboriginal patients were forcibly removed from their homes and exiled
01:28until it was shut down in the 1950s.
01:31The resurgence of the disease billed as a symptom of deep inequality
01:35between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.
01:38It's another thing that happens, people living in poverty,
01:41and I think as a country we should be pretty ashamed of that.
01:44A shameful history still unfolding.
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