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‘In a precarious situation’: why experts say Australia needed a center for disease control
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‘In a precarious situation’: why experts say Australia needed a center for disease control

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Experts have welcomed a permanent Australian Center for Disease Control (CDC) after legislation passed the Senate on Wednesday, but there are concerns main health problems missed by the agency current assignment.
While an interim Center for Disease Control has been operating within the federal Ministry of Health since January 2024, and the government has already committed $251 million over four years to establish the agency, the legislation outlines the center’s functions and establishes its independence.

The center will be headed by a Director General appointed by the Minister of Health and will be operational on January 1, 2026.

National Disability Insurance Scheme Minister Jenny McAllister told the Senate on Wednesday that the center was designed to “strengthen our public health capacity, improve pandemic preparedness and protect the health and wellbeing of all Australians – not just in times of crisis, but every day”.
Health Minister Mark Butler said the agency had delivered on the Albanian government’s commitment to “establish an independent agency that will help protect Australia from disease and public health threats”.
“We know there will be another pandemic and the Australian CDC will ensure we are better prepared,” he said.

The Public Health Association of Australia (PHAA), Australia’s peak public health body, said the legislation to establish an Australian CDC is the “most important piece of public health infrastructure in generations”.

Associate Professor Paul Griffin, from the University of Queensland Medical School, told SBS News that the establishment of a CDC will help Australia’s response to infectious diseases.
“We are currently in a very precarious situation, both in terms of how we are currently responding to existing threats and vaccination rates are a major issue,” he said.
“So we need to do more on what we’re already dealing with, but we also need to be really prepared to be at the forefront of new and emerging threats as well.”

Griffin also said the CDC will ensure components of public health responses such as infectious disease surveillance, data collection and communication, and recommendations around vaccination are standardized across Australia.

“We have a lot of confusion between different states, a lot of differences and so having an organization coordinating these responses will hopefully provide some consistency and clarity,” he said.

It takes a long time

There have been calls to establish an Australian CDC for almost forty years, and before the interim center was established, Australia was the only OECD country without an equivalent body.
In 1987, Professor Bob Douglas, who became foundation director of the National Center for Epidemiology and Population Health at the Australian National University, asked whether Australia needed such an agency.

Douglas described a consensus among epidemiologists from the Australasian Epidemiological Association that “while Australia’s therapeutic health care services are highly developed, disease control activities are fragmented, inadequate and poorly coordinated”.

In 2011, the PHAA and the Australasian Faculty of Public Health Medicine released a paper on the need for an Australian CDC, describing the benefit of “strong central, expert-driven leadership and coordination of national control of communicable diseases”.
However, the creation of the Australian CDC was ultimately a response by the Albanian government to the 670-page report published following an investigation into Australia’s response to COVID-19. The report recommended that Australia establish a permanent CDC as a priority.

Although Australia fared better than other countries in terms of mortality from COVID-19 and economic recovery, the response to the pandemic took a heavy toll on the country.

“People were working outside normal limits, and many of the public health professionals, frontline community service and healthcare workers, political leaders, health experts and civil servants we relied on to get through the pandemic are no longer in their positions,” the report said.

“This poses risks to our resilience to face a new crisis.”

What will the CDC do?

The Australian CDC said it is growing in a “phased approach” and has initially focused on preparing for public health emergencies, improving the national public health surveillance system, and building capacity on health security and the links between human health, animal health and the environment.

The first priorities for the agency starting in January will be “communicable diseases, pandemic preparedness and environmental health, occupational health and respiratory disease capabilities,” McAllister said. However, she said the center could expand into areas such as chronic diseases in 2028 after an independent review.

While she said the agency is essential, Independent MP Dr Monique Ryan has criticized the bill establishing the center for failing to tackle chronic diseases immediately.
“Nine out of 10 deaths in Australia are linked to chronic diseases such as cancer, diabetes and cardiovascular disease, but the CDC we want to set up now will not address these until after 2028 at best,” she said.
Griffin said that although the agency is still in its infancy, it is reasonable that chronic diseases are not included from the start, but said they should be included in the agency’s activities.
“I think integrating chronic disease management, given its role in infectious disease risk and its impact on the broader population, would be very important.”

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