Fiji drink victim speaks out
In December seven tourists - including four Australians - were hospitalised with suspected alcohol poisoning after drinking pina coladas at a popular Fiji resort.
At the time Fijian authorities said no methanol was found in the drinks
But now - in an exclusive interview with the ABC - one of the victims is speaking out describing how she went into a coma and almost died after taking just two sips of the drink.
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ABC News
4 hours ago
- ABC News
Diagnosing scabies in the Pacific could get easier and faster, saving lives
ABC: podcast. You're listening to Pacific Pulse on ABC Radio Australia. Matthew Paxman: Part of the issue with scabies is you get these tiny little skin lesions and also through all the extra scratching your skin's inflamed. So you can get bacterial infections through the skin. Melissa Maykin: Have you ever had to scrub and lather to get rid of those relentless little mites called scabies? Australian scientists are now developing a world first rapid test that can spot scabies in just 10 to 20 minutes, no lab needed, and it even detects common bacterial skin infections. Scabies is a huge public health headache across the Pacific, with around 18 to 20% of people in Fiji, Solomon Islands and other places affected, especially children. For those who can't get rid of the mites, scabies can link to serious complications like secondary infections, heart and kidney disease. Thanks to Melbourne, Australia's Zip Diagnostics and trials held in Darwin, this portable battery powered test could revolutionise how remote communities fight this itchy, neglected tropical disease. To dive into the science, I'm speaking to the company's Scientific Director, Associate Professor Jack Richards, and the company's PhD Research Assistant, Matthew Paxman. Associate Professor Jack Richards: Look, it's an interesting disease in many regards. And so it's been of interest to us, firstly because it's actually a really common disease. It's all throughout the world, and estimates are in the range of 200 to even 500 million cases per year of this disease globally. So it's a very common disease. It's highly prevalent through the Pacific. So some of the countries that have the highest rates of this in the world are in the Pacific. So I think Fijian Vanuatu was recently identified as in the top five countries of the world. It has a huge impact on the quality of life for people. It's actually caused by a mite, a little insect that actually burrows into the skin. And actually, these burrows cause an inflammatory and allergic response and intense itching. So people that get these infections with scabies mites have a huge impact on their life because they're constantly itching, this through the day and the night, and it's unrelenting. That's sort of the impact of it. And then they also are highly at risk of getting secondary bacterial infections, which can be either localised in those same areas because of all the scratching, or they can actually spread and cause bloodstream infections and septicemia, and even special infections of the heart called rheumatic heart disease. From seemingly innocuous little insect that lives on the skin and burrows in the skin, you've got this huge impact globally on health and just the way of life of people. So we think that's a really important issue to deal with. It's what we call a neglected tropical disease because most people in the world are not interested in really dealing with it or don't have the resources to look at this disease because it really occurs in areas of remote communities and low to middle income countries. The people that suffer the most are the poorest people in the world and often don't have the resources and access to health services. Despite being really common and having a huge impact on their life, not many people are helping to address this issue. Yeah, that's sort of part of the reason. And the other one is really that the diagnostics themselves are very poor. Generally speaking, the current approach to this is that healthcare professionals have a look at somebody's skin and they usually make their best guess of whether this is scabies or not. And in some cases, if they've got access to a laboratory or a microscope, they might send off some skin scrapings and try and identify this scabies insect under the microscope. So we think we can offer something to that. Melissa Maykin: Yeah, that's really another side of this whole issue. So what you talked about having secondary illnesses as a result of the scabies, are you able just to explain quickly what happens in the body due to that infection and the kind of secondary issues that can arise? Associate Professor Jack Richards: Yeah, sure. Matt, do you want to? Matthew Paxman: Yeah. So part of the issue with scabies is you get these tiny little skin lesions and also through all the extra scratching, your skin's inflamed. So you can get bacterial infections through the skin from that. So particularly group A strep and staphylococcus aureus, these two bacteria that can grow and cause infections on the skin. So that potentially could cause more severe types of skin lesions, but sometimes they can go deeper into the tissue, into the bloodstream and cause some severe complications like rheumatic fever, rheumatic heart disease, Jack said before. And you get issues such as sepsis and toxic shock, but these conditions are potentially life threatening. So it's really important to control scabies to make sure these bacterias are getting through. The skin needs to stay intact to keep these bacteria that is sometimes commensally on the skin outside of your internal system. Melissa Maykin: Mm. No, thank you for that. It's really good to keep it at layman's level for not just myself, but for anyone who's really not too aware of the kind of health science behind scabies. But I was always of the belief that scabies was contracted from animals. So what carries scabies? Where does it mostly spread from? Matthew Paxman: So animals are affected by scabies as well, but humans won't generally get scabies from an animal. Scabies transmits through skin to skin contact with another infested person. And sometimes the scabies can actually survive on materials like the bed sheets or fabrics. So you need to have your skin exposed to a fertilized mite to contract scabies from another human. So that's why overcrowding is a major risk factor for this disease. Not necessarily hygiene, it's just that close skin to skin contact that causes these high level of transmission in overcrowded regions. Melissa Maykin: Thank you. So just jumping forward to the diagnostic test, are you able to just explain how this tool works? Matthew Paxman: Yeah, so we're looking at molecular diagnostics. So the difference with molecular diagnostics compared to the current diagnostic methods for scabies is we're trying to detect the genetic material of the mites or the particles that they leave behind on the body. So the previous methods, as we mentioned, involves trying to look at the skin and see evidence of mites or eggs. But with the molecular test, it would be a standardized sampling method. Essentially what we're doing is we're adopting the LAMP technique, which is a nucleic acid amplification system called loop-mediated isothermal amplification. So in concept, it's similar to PCR, but it tends to be faster and more specific. And the big benefit of LAMP is you can run it at one single temperature. So that means the instruments that it can run on can be simpler, more portable, and able to be implemented into these resource limited settings that we're really interested in. So that's what we're doing at the moment is we're designing the LAMP assay. So all the constituents that go into it. And then another important aspect is we're trying to design a simplified sample preparation workflow that so any untrained users, healthcare workers, will be able to easily process and run the tests. Melissa Maykin: Yeah, fantastic. I can't really visualize it at the moment, but what does it look like? Yeah, if you're standing in the lab, you're about to run some tests on the scabies. Matthew Paxman: I can, I have some things right next to me. This might not be that relevant for radio, but this is instruments. So at Zip Diagnostics, we have a point of care diagnostic platform called the P2. So it's this instrument here. It's got a touchscreen that provides all the prompts to do the steps. And essentially, our tests are these little lyophilized cartridges. So that's got the LAMP assay in there. And you're going to be able to process the sample on this deck and set up the test and run it within this little light, small, portable instrument. This is a platform approved by the TGA. So we can use it for clinical purposes here in Australia and can probably talk about elsewhere. Yeah, Associate Professor Jack Richards: and Matt's raised some really important points there. Where this disease occurs is in these remote settings in most cases, and they can be really far away from laboratory services. And so it's really important that we take the test to the people that have it. And what Matt's showing us here is a test, which is small, it's very portable, can run off a battery. And it really makes use of the best technology that we've got in the world to detect the DNA of these organisms. So it's a highly sensitive test. And yeah, and it's got to be highly usable for the people that are going to operate this in these environments. And so it's got to be a simple test to run. And it's also got to have components to the test which don't require cold chain supply. So it's no good being in these environments where there's no refrigeration or freezing access. So we have these freeze dried components to the assay which allow it to be then deployed and stored out in those environments. You're ABC: listening to Pacific Pulse on ABC Radio Australia. Melissa Maykin: On the show today, you're hearing from Dr. Jack Richards from Zip Diagnostics and PhD researcher and research assistant, Matthew Paxman. We're talking about a groundbreaking new SCABES test. In 2022, Solomon Islands became the first country to distribute ivermectin to its entire population to tackle SCABES, a disease that affects one in four people there and is linked to serious infections like blood poisoning and kidney disease. The ABC's Jordan Fennell had this report. Prianka Srinivasan ABC: Solomon Islands has become the first country in the world to have the anti-parasitic drug ivermectin distributed to its entire population to treat SCABES. The drug attracted controversy during the pandemic after it was linked to coronavirus misinformation. But as Jordan Fennell reports, health experts are optimistic about the success of the rollout. Jordan Fennell: In a clinic in Honiara, patients are furiously scratching themselves. Oliver Sokana: SCABES is quite distemping in any way we try to describe it. But they will spend time in itching and scratching the body and try to get themselves to feel comfortable. It's really distemping. Jordan Fennell: Oliver Sakana from the Solomon Islands Ministry of Health is overseeing the rollout of ivermectin to treat SCABES. He estimates they're helping more than 200 people a day. Oliver Sokana: That means we already treated more than 5,000 people in provinces that they already started. Jordan Fennell: In a country with a population of more than 680,000 people, one in four suffer from the skin disease. But relief from the pain will come quickly. Just two doses of ivermectin over the space of a week will get rid of SCABES. Sarah Anderson: Ivermectin is an antiparasitic drug and SCABES is a parasite. And so the ivermectin works to actually kill the little SCABE mite that has dug under the skin and made its home in somebody's skin. Sarah Jordan Fennell: Anderson is the Murdoch Children's Research Institute's World SCABES Program Manager. She says it's not just a disease that makes you itchy. If left untreated, it can lead to serious consequences. Sarah Anderson: So it can lead to very serious skin infections. As kids start scratching the SCABES, the skin breaks and then infection can get into the skin. And then that has been shown to be able to lead to very serious bacterial skin infections, but also to blood infections. And there's also a connection to kidney disease and heart disease. Jordan Fennell: During the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, ivermectin became a controversial drug when former US President Donald Trump urged people to use it to treat coronavirus, but doctors were advising against it. Ms Anderson says while it might not be effective to deal with COVID, for years it has worked to treat antiparasitic diseases like SCABES. Sarah Anderson: Ivermectin for the use of SCABES and other parasites has long been researched and shown to be effective in very, very good trials. Jordan Fennell: She says this distribution project in Solomon Islands is the result of more than 10 years of research and aims to give everyone in the country a treatment of ivermectin to stop the transmission over the next few months. Oliver Sukarna says his team of thousands are working hard to deliver the medicine. We Oliver Sokana: have the evidence. We have the evidence that SCABES is really a public health problem in Solomon Islands. So this MDA rollout is very significant in the control of SCABES in this country. Jordan Fennell: A similar rollout will go ahead in Fiji in September, and if they're able to get more funding, Ms Anderson hopes to take the life-changing treatment to more Pacific countries. Sarah Anderson: SCABES tends to be kind of like the disease that doesn't get a lot of attention. It definitely is an area where we would love to see more people joining this sort of mission to get rid of SCABES. Melissa Maykin: And that's what we're talking about today. That was Sarah Anderson, Murdoch Children's Research Institute World SCABES Program Manager, ending that report by Jordan Fennell for Pacific Beat. But a new diagnostic tool to detect SCABES early is in the works and could be a game changer for Pacific nations and their communities. Here's Zip Diagnostics Associate Professor Jack Richards. Associate Professor Jack Richards: So it's not as simple as just making a widget that just gets thrown at people. What we really want to do is work with communities and work with local experts and stakeholders just to really understand the setting and the need that they've got and the capability that they've got. We want to design this to be a test that's really suitable for them in those environments. So we're just beginning that process now. We're working with a great team up at Menzies who do a lot of work with First Nations communities up in the top end of Australia and beginning to liaise with people across the Pacific. We've done lots of work with PNG in the past and Fiji and Vanuatu. And so we're going to really continue that work to make sure that this test is actually designed and is appropriate for use in those settings. And I think a diagnosis does several things. One is, at the moment, you've got this situation between a patient and a healthcare professional where both of them are trying to make their best guess. Is this scabies or is it something else? Is it a mosquito bite or is it an allergic reaction eczema or something like that? And it creates a really difficult dynamic in the clinical decision making process because there's uncertainty. So one of the aspects of bringing a test like this in is we want data driven clinical decision making and that's a process that occurs between the patient and the healthcare professional. So the patient gets better data and is a participant in a point of care setting of their own clinical management and having access to data that confirms the diagnosis really provides them an incentive to get on with treatment and to complete treatment. And that's actually really important and it's particularly important for scabies. The treatment usually takes the form of a cream, as you mentioned, and that cream is an anti insecticide sort of cream that's applied usually from the neck down to the feet. So it's actually quite a tricky one to apply. Melissa Maykin: It is, yeah. Associate Professor Jack Richards: It's not that fun. You've got to douse yourself literally from head to toe in this cream and usually sit it out for overnight generally and then get up in the morning and wash it all off again. That's the most common form of treatment and usually you've got to back that up with a second round of that treatment one to two weeks later. There is a form of treatment that you can use, which is a tablet, but that's not always available in some of these settings. That's a little bit easier to administer, but it again also requires a sort of follow up dose. So you can see for both of these, having knowledge that this is the disease that you've got and therefore the need to do this sort of treatment because it is laborious can actually really help with doing that treatment course properly. Melissa Maykin: Yeah. Save a lot of people's time and resources going straight to what they know is needed to be done. And yeah, my friend did have to douse herself in the cream. The most tedious part was when she missed a spot and then the scabies didn't go away. So she had to just keep doing it on repeat until she hits. It took months. I was really shocked by how difficult it was for her to get rid of it. And I guess there's also that social stigma too, of feeling quite dirty and quite infested with a disease. There's layers to the feeling of contracting something like that. This I'm sure is going to make a big difference for people to get on top of it really quickly. But maybe Matt, if you can answer this, what other types of common skin infections has this also helped detect? Matthew Paxman: So for our test, we're also going to be designing targets that will detect the two main bacterial infections that often go along with scabies. So that's group A strep and Staph aureus. These are bacteria that commonly are pathogenic to humans, but sometimes they just live on the skin and not cause issues. But then with the scabies, you get the lesions and they can enter your system and cause some severe diseases. So it will be the same sample. So you will only have to take samples or inspect the patient once. A lot of the other diagnostic methods sometimes overlook bacterial infections because if your patient comes in and they're complaining about severe itching, they might not be looking for bacterial infections. So it's really important to be able to diagnose those because they require a different treatment than scabies. So in scabies, you'll need antimicrobial sort of medicines or creams in that case. Melissa Maykin: And a little side to this, I was talking to Dr. Mark Jacobs, World Health Organization, maybe last year about the rise of antimicrobial resistance. It's especially an issue, I guess, in the region, in the Pacific, where antibiotics is scarce. The right antibiotics isn't often administered. Are you working around antibiotics in this way? And is this something that you have to be aware of? Associate Professor Jack Richards: Yeah, it's a really important issue and it's becoming increasingly problematic globally. And it's driven by lots of different factors. But one of the factors is, as you're saying, the lack of diagnostics to really guide, do we need antibiotics in this instance or not? Are we making the right decision to give this patient antibiotics? And more particularly, are we giving the right antibiotics when we do that? And obviously, the best information we can have is, yes, there's this infection here and it is susceptible to this particular antibiotic. So we've even chosen the right antibiotic for this particular bug. So they're the sort of aspirations that we have. And part of that will be part of this test as we develop it. Melissa Maykin: Yeah, great. What happens next now that you've developed this test? Where are things at for you guys? Associate Professor Jack Richards: It's still under development. So it's in the early phases of the development. So Matt is doing the design of that at the moment and making good progress. So we're about to start doing some initial clinical studies with the collaborators that we've got at the Menzies in Darwin so that we can really start to understand if this test is working properly. And then we, as an Australian company, the first Australian company to ever get a point of care molecular test approved by the TGA. So we're going to use all of those learnings and that effort that we put into making this test in Australia. So we're really proud of being able to do that and have Australian made products like this that hopefully are globally important products. And so, yeah, keep people up to date over the next year or two as this goes through the formal clinical studies and the regulatory approval processes. It's a fair journey, obviously, to get these things into use for humans. Melissa Maykin: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, Matt, was there anything, did you have any comment about how you guys are tracking? Matthew Paxman: Not too much extra than what Jack said. Melissa Maykin: Yeah, that's okay. I just might ask you, Matthew, because this is a PhD area of yours, if I can ask, I guess what fascinates you most about this area? I think you contribute hugely to communities that are very much in need. But yeah, you're able to share just finally a little bit about what drives your motivation in this area of research. Matthew Paxman: So my original study, I was trained as like a biochemist and working at Zip Diagnostics, I've got involved with looking at infectious diseases and different pathogens. And that's really fascinated me. And one area that I was excited about was having a look at different bacterial infections. And then I was pretty naive to scabies before this project started, which makes sense. It's a neglected disease. People in these remote communities know about it, but in other areas, it's not very widely discussed. So it was really interesting, a really interesting disease and really important with this like hidden, massive global prevalence. So I thought it was really important. And I also very much appreciate how important these issues are to regions such as like Indigenous Australian populations and other sort of low middle income areas like the Pacific Islands and certain areas in Africa. So that really fascinates me. Melissa Maykin: A really big thank you to Associate Professor Jack Richards, the Scientific Director of Zip Diagnostics and Research Assistant and PhD candidate Matthew Paxman for their time on the show today. This has been Pacific Pulse with me, Melissa Makin. If you missed any part of this episode and you'd like to listen back, you can search for us on the ABC Pacific website at Pacific Pulse or find us on your favorite streaming platform. If you'd like to hear more conversations about health care in the Pacific, consider listening to the latest episode of PoliTalk with Scott Widear. Basic medications like paracetamol and antibiotics are very hard to come by in many Pacific countries at the moment, and this is leaving doctors and patients struggling under the strain of sickness. You can find them by searching for PoliTalk, P-O-L-I-T-O-K on the ABC Pacific website. This episode was produced on the lands of the Jagera and the Turrbal people.
ABC News
4 hours ago
- ABC News
Millions of Australians could miss out on refunds from financial misconduct
Millions of Australians sold dud insurance with their home loans, car loans or credit cards may be entitled to compensation but a looming deadline of June 30 could see many miss out. For decades, the big four banks, other lenders and insurers raked in billions from these policies, while paying out as little as 11 cents in the dollar, rendering these financial products effectively junk insurance. The products, known as Consumer Credit Insurance and other add-on insurance products, became a symbol of the financial misconduct exposed during the banking royal commission. They were routinely bundled with credit cards, personal loans, home loans and car loans. Sometimes with the false claim that the loan wouldn't be approved if the customer didn't take up the insurance. The products were marketed as protection in the event of an accident, illness or job loss. But in too many cases customers didn't understand what they were paying for, didn't need the cover, or were ineligible to claim. Some were even signed up without their knowledge or consent. The real scandal isn't just that these junk insurance policies were sold but that the industry got away with exploiting customers for so long. ASIC launched an investigation into the products in 2011, issuing warnings and recommendations that went largely ignored as evidenced by the continued mis-selling of the products over the next few years. It wasn't until the fallout from the royal commission's final report in 2019 that things started to change. To put the magnitude of the problem into context, over a 29-year period, it is estimated that more than 10 million add-on insurance products were sold in Australia, valued at billions of dollars, some believe it could be as high as $10 billion. To date, claims have been refunded through a combination of class actions, internal dispute resolutions with the institutions and complaints lodged with the Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA). According to ASIC, insurers have repaid over $270 million to customers who were mis-sold add-on car-yard insurance and CCI. It means billions of dollars is potentially still unclaimed by millions of customers. But that is now at risk. AFCA, the industry-funded external dispute resolution service, has imposed a final deadline of June for customers who were sold these products before July 2019 to lodge a claim. Originally set for February 2025, the cut-off was extended earlier this year. The deadline is based on AFCA's position that the banking royal commission, which handed down its final report in February 2019, should have alerted consumers to the widespread problems with add-on insurance. As a result, AFCA argues that most people should have been aware or reasonably aware of the issue from that point. The six-year limit reflects AFCA's standard rule for complaints: that they must be lodged within six years of the consumer becoming aware or reasonably expected to have become aware that they suffered a loss. In this case, AFCA is effectively using the royal commission as the trigger for starting that six-year clock. With less than three weeks to go before the deadline, there are growing fears that thousands, possibly millions of Australians with legitimate claims may miss out because they don't know they are eligible. A similar insurance scandal rocked Britain, where more than 60 million add-on insurance policies were sold between 1990 and 2010. Like in Australia they were bundled with loans, credit cards or mortgages, and sold to people who didn't need or couldn't use them. It culminated in financial institutions being forced to repay an eye-watering £48 billion ($99.5 billion) to customers, making it the largest insurance scandal and redress scheme in UK history. The product at the centre of it all, Payment Protection Insurance (PPI), became a household term for financial misconduct. The UK's financial regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), ran a high-profile public awareness campaign that included TV ads, urging people to check if they were eligible for refunds. The FCA eventually set a final deadline of August 2019, nearly a decade after the scandal came to light. In 2017, two years before the final cut-off, the UK regulator launched an additional national campaign to raise awareness about the looming deadline for claims. The campaign featured a robotic model of Arnold Schwarzenegger's Terminator head urging people to act, with the now-famous line: "Make a decision. Do it now." The ad, funded by 18 of the worst-offending banks, building societies and credit card providers, ran across TV, radio and digital platforms, which helped get the message out. In stark contrast, Australia's deadline has arrived with little fanfare. Consumer Action Law Centre's chief executive said junk insurance, by its nature, is hidden, harmful and of poor value and the policies wrongfully enriched corporations at the expense of customers. "Even today, there are people becoming aware of their right to a refund of junk insurance premiums," she said. On AFCA's June 30 deadline, she said many affected customers very likely didn't watch the royal commission, or read their loan documents closely enough to know they were entitled to a refund. "There will be more becoming aware of their rights down the track," she said. Tonkin said if only a few people are claiming, there's no need for a strict deadline. But if lots of people are still coming forward, it shows the problem hasn't been fixed and should be extended. "At the very least, AFCA should retain a discretion to allow claims, particularly for consumers experiencing vulnerability," she said. And she said it should be incumbent on banks and other lenders that profited from junk insurance policies to be identifying customers who are entitled to a refund. The founder of financial refund service Claimo, Nathan Mortlock, estimates more than 5 million Australians were sold add-on insurance, estimated at more than $17 billion. Claimo has been processing thousands of claims for potential victims of add on insurance. Since A Current Affair aired a story last November about the looming deadline, Claimo said it has received almost 50,000 new enquiries. "That surge proves Australians were not previously aware. If they were, they would have come forward in 2019," he said. Some claimants received anything from a few thousand dollars to more than $20,000 with Claimo taking a 30 per cent cut. All up it has 70,000 cases, worth an estimated $67 million. "Millions of Australians may miss out on compensation they're legally entitled to, simply because they didn't know they were victims in time," he said. Mortlock said AFCA was supposed to protect consumers but by setting an arbitrary cut-off date and forcing people to prove they didn't know about the issue sooner, it's creating legal hurdles that most can't get over. Add-on insurance was the industry's dirty little secret for years. It first landed on ASIC's radar in 2011, at the height of the UK's own add-on insurance scandal. That year, the regulator launched an investigation into 15 financial institutions including the big four banks, CBA, NAB, ANZ and Westpac over the sale of consumer credit insurance (CCI), the most common add-on product. ASIC made 10 recommendations, but little changed. The products kept selling, the mis-selling continued, and the industry kept profiting at the expense of customers. In 2017 ASIC sounded the alarm again, raising concerns about the way the products were being sold. And in 2019, following the release of the banking royal commission's final report, ASIC released a fresh report that had reviewed the sale of CCI products by 11 financial institutions between 2011 and 2018 and found the sales practices and product design were still delivering "extremely poor value for money." It found that for CCI sold with credit cards, consumers received only 11 cents in claims for every dollar paid in premiums. Across all CCI products the average return was 19 cents, confirming the product was effectively junk. "Telephone sales staff used high-pressure selling and other unfair sales practices when selling CCI, and consumers were given non-compliant personal advice to buy unsuitable policies," ASIC's report said. Since the release of the report, the 11 lenders it focused on as part of its investigation, stopped selling CCI with credit cards, personal loans, or home loans. In a statement Emma Curtis, AFCA's Lead Ombudsman for Insurance, said AFCA wanted to make sure consumers know this deadline is approaching so it has been running ads on radio across the country, as well as print ads in major newspapers and online, to reach as many people as possible. "Under our rules, AFCA will generally not consider a complaint unless it was submitted within six years of the date the complainant first became aware or should reasonably have become aware that they have suffered a loss. The sale of add-on insurance has been the subject of significant media, regulator, industry and consumer advocacy campaigns and class actions for many years. AFCA is letting consumers know that we will generally consider complaints regarding the sale of add-on insurance sold before July 2019, provided they are submitted to AFCA by June 30 this year." She said AFCA will generally assess complaints lodged after that date as outside the six year time limit, unless the complainant can demonstrate that special circumstances apply, which we will assess on a case-by-case basis. ASIC said in a statement it had published numerous reports revealing that add-on insurance sold at point-of-purchase was often low value, commission-driven, and ultimately ended up in customers paying for coverage they were unaware of or did not need. ASIC's remediation update in 2022 found that there had been $5.6 billion in remediation for an estimated seven million Australian consumers for failures identified across the financial system. This included remediations in the insurance industry totalling more than $1.3 billion. Junk insurance was just one component of this, along with pricing promises failures and poor sales practices. It seems after years of financial misconduct the burden is on consumers, many still unaware they're owed a refund. With little fanfare and a deadline fast approaching, millions may slip through the cracks.
Courier-Mail
14 hours ago
- Courier-Mail
What Health Checks Should Men Do at Every Age?
1/11 As we kick off Men's Health Week, new data exploring the state of men's health in Australia has experts pleading with the public to take their well-being seriously. According to research conducted by the Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia (PCFA), an overwhelming majority of Aussie men are choosing to delay health check-ups and visits with their doctor, as well as cutting back on vital prescription medication, and sadly, the reason behind their health-related apprehension is all too familiar to most Australians. Just as it's forcing us to forgo life's little luxuries and switch to a more affordable grocery list, the rising cost of living is having a detrimental impact on Australians' ability to proactively take control of their health needs, with men in particular forgoing their medical needs in pursuit of saving money.
