May 14, 2008

After reviewing last night's budget announcement, Breast Cancer Network Australia (BCNA) has identified the following budget implications for women with breast cancer.

Breast Care Nurses

$12.0 million has been allocated over four years to the McGrath Foundation to recruit, train and employ up to 30 specialist breast cancer nurses. This is a commitment that was made during the election campaign in November last year.

BCNA is keen to work with the McGrath Foundation to ensure a sustainable program is developed to employ extra breast care nurses in the areas in which they are most needed.

Breast Prostheses

$31.0 million has been allocated over five years to the National Breast and Ovarian Cancer Centre (NBOCC) for breast prostheses. This measure will provide women with a subsidy for the purchase of breast prostheses, and allow for the replacement of prostheses every two to five years. This commitment was also made during the 2007 federal election campaign.

BCNA has been advocating for many years for a national prosthesis subsidy program and welcomes this commitment.  We look forward to working with the NBOCC to assist in the development of this program.

The funding for additional Breast Care Nurses and the Breast Prostheses subsidy program are part of the Australian Government's ‘National Cancer Plan'. The National Cancer Plan, which includes a wide range of cancer initiatives, has received total funding of $249 million for this budget period.

Additional funding for hospitals has also been a significant feature in this federal budget. BCNA will continue to advocate on behalf of women with breast cancer to ensure that these budget allocations contribute to improving women's treatment and care.

Where BCNA will continue to advocate

While BCNA has welcomed the funding commitments to support women with breast cancer, we will continue to advocate to government on the following issues:

• Patient Assistant Travel Scheme - to better support women and their families from rural and remote areas of Australia who are required to travel significant distances for breast cancer treatment.
• Breast Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) screening for high risk women - to ensure that the commitment to create a Medicare rebate for MRI for women at high risk of breast cancer is implemented.
• Workforce issues - while there were small and specific funding allocations for the cancer workforce in the budget, more needs to be done to ensure that workforce issues don't continue to impact on timely treatment and care provided to women affected by breast cancer, particularly in rural and remote areas of Australia.