National review launched into IVF accreditation following second Monash embryo mix-up
All Australian states and territories will undertake a review into the implementation of an independent verification body for fertility providers.
Victorian Health Minister Mary-Anne Thomas said health ministers met on Friday and agreed to a three-month rapid-review into the sector, which is currently accredited by the Reproductive Technology Accreditation Committee.
"It simply doesn't pass the pub test that the people that provide the service are also the ones that determine who provides the service," she said.
The announcement comes after two separate embryo mix-ups by Melbourne-based provider Monash IVF were revealed in a matter of months.
Ms Thomas said her preference was for the immediate implementation of a regulator, however this was rejected by Queensland Health Minister Tim Nicholls.
Ministerial meetings by health ministers operate on a consensus, meaning all ministers must agree to make any changes nationally.
"I think it's concerning that there may well be further errors that we don't know about," she said.
"And that is because the body that currently accredits fertility care providers is made up of fertility care providers. that's why I find Queensland's position so perplexing."
This week, Monash IVF announced to the ASX it would conduct an internal investigation into an embryo mix-up at its Clayton laboratory in Melbourne's south-east earlier this month.
That announcement, which came months after the revelation another patient of Monash IVF in Brisbane gave birth to a stranger's baby in 2023, sparked calls for greater regulation of the field.
Monash IVF chief executive officer Michael Knaap also resigned earlier this week.
On Friday afternoon Mr Butler said he was "really worried about public confidence" in the sector, which he said needed greater transparency and independent accreditation for fertility service providers.
"We know that in the last full year there were dozens of breaches of the code of conduct but I don't know, as the federal health minister, what they were," he said.
"They are not reported, they are not disclosed."
He said health officials across the country would provide advice on whether Australia should move towards national regulations.
"There are essentially eight systems of regulation across the country," he said.
"It would take a bit of time to move to more national regulation."
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
ABC News
6 hours ago
- ABC News
Two women are being treated for meningococcal B in the Royal Hobart Hospital
Mark Veitch We normally have between one and five cases of meningococcal disease a year in Tasmania. They don't occur, they can occur randomly through the year. They tend to happen a little bit more often during winter and spring. So it's not surprising that we would have two within a week or so of each other. Our team has looked carefully into each case and there's not found any links between the social or other connections of the people. Leon Compton What do Tasmanians need to know to keep themselves as safe as possible, Mark? Mark Veitch They need to know that meningococcal disease does occur and that it's rare and that people with meningococcal disease are obviously sick. They will have significant fevers, aches and pains. They'll be really quite unwell. It's worse than a typical cough or cold or flu and it's very important that they get urgent medical care if they do that. The public also needs to know that there's a way of preventing meningococcal disease. There are two vaccines available, one against ACW and Y strains and that's given routinely at age 12 months and in early high school but people of other ages can purchase it. Group B disease is prevented by a specific vaccine and the vaccine for that is available. It is available for the whole population aged over six weeks but it's free for the people at the highest risk of B disease which are Aboriginal Tasmanians and Australians and people with medical conditions that affect their immunity. But anybody who's got concerns can talk to their GP or their pharmacist about meningococcal vaccines. Leon Compton And it's not cheap, right? If you're trying to get that and you're not one of those cohorts who gets it subsidised, it's not a cheap vaccination, meningococcal B? Mark Veitch It's not Leon, it's around $100 a dose and you need between one dose for the ACWY vaccine for people outside the NIP eligible age group but you need between either two or three doses depending on your age for the B group vaccine. Leon Compton And just the main symptoms, briefly? Mark Veitch The main symptoms are that people are really sick. This is someone who is well in the morning and is obviously sicker than they've probably ever been before. They have a fever, severe aches and pains, a headache, they may have a rash. In a baby, these symptoms may not be so obvious. They may just be not eating so well, they may be a bit blotchy or floppy but people would notice that their baby is distinctly unwell and I know that most people would seek urgent medical care when those sort of arise.
SBS Australia
12 hours ago
- SBS Australia
Australia's 'forever chemical' blind spots — and what could reduce your levels
Earlier this year, it was revealed that 3M knew firefighting foams containing PFAS substances were toxic. It has produced fire fighting foams since the 1960s and started phasing out the substances in the early 2000s. Source: AAP / Craig Abraham, Fairfax pool Many Australians have some level of PFAS — often dubbed forever chemicals — in their body, but understanding their impacts and strategies for reducing them is lacking. This week, scientists and experts continued to give evidence to a federal inquiry investigating the regulation and management of per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS. Their remarks highlighted a series of knowledge gaps that make it difficult to ascertain the health impacts of these chemicals, which are present in our environment and bodies. It also served as a reminder about one of the only known ways to reduce our levels. PFAS are synthetic compounds found in a variety of industrial and consumer products, including makeup, non-stick cooking surfaces and food packaging, due to their heat, stain, grease and water-resistant properties. They often don't degrade in the environment and build up in our bodies, earning them the title "forever chemicals". Professor Peter Sly, deputy director of the Queensland Children's Medical Research Institute, said control groups with no level of PFAS simply "don't exist anymore". "I'm afraid every person in Australia has PFAS levels in their body. It's a matter of how high they are," he told the PFAS committee hearing on Tuesday. Last month, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) released data that tested for 11 different PFAS levels in the general population. It detected three types of PFAS in the blood of over 85 per cent of the population. While research groups currently test for over 40 different types of PFAS, the ABS estimates there are more than 15,000 identified compounds belonging to the PFAS class of chemicals. In 2022, a world-first Australian study investigated whether blood and plasma donations could remediate elevated PFAS levels in 285 firefighters. Historically, firefighters have been exposed to higher levels of PFAS through the frequent use of firefighting foams, although alternatives have since been developed that do not include these chemicals. Following 12 months of testing staff, the study found that those who donated blood every 12 weeks had a 10 per cent reduction in PFAS chemicals. The group that donated plasma every six weeks had their PFAS levels reduced by 30 per cent, with no significant change for the control group who did neither. Miri Forbes, one of the study authors and an associate professor at Sydney's Macquarie University, said understanding the impact of the reduced levels on the human body requires further study. "We don't know yet. This is the first study that has found how we can reduce PFAS," she told SBS News. "It was really exciting to know that it's possible to be able to reduce the levels of PFAS we can measure in the blood, but we need to understand, what are the health implications of that?" Other observational studies have found women have reduced levels. PFAS leave the body during menstruation and the replenished blood supply doesn't have PFAS, lowering the overall levels. Martyn Kirk, a professor of epidemiology at the Australian National University, told SBS News that there is still plenty we don't know about PFAS. These blind spots include; The long-term health impacts of low exposure The health impacts on highly exposed individuals Where exposure comes from in the household environment Methods of reducing PFAS While there have been studies that have linked higher levels of PFAS with health impacts, such as higher levels of cholesterol, many don't yield consistent results, making conclusions difficult. Kirk said longitudinal studies, which can be reproduced and repeated, are needed to capture exposure levels across different areas and ages as well as demonstrate where levels decline over time. He believes highly exposed people, such as firefighters, present an opportunity to understand the link to different health outcomes. "You've got a much greater chance of being able to identify the potential relationship between exposure and disease, whereas in the community, the levels are often very low," he said. A barrier to obtaining datasets for scientific research is the cost of samples, which are complex to interpret and expensive as a result. Sly suggested a biomonitoring program by collecting leftover blood from hospitals and pooling samples. "By pooling samples, you protect individuals' identity, and secondly, you only have to measure one sample rather than ten or 100," he told the PFAS committee on Tuesday. "And you can get levels across the population," he said, adding that a similar method was currently used to test wastewater for drugs. Companies started phasing out PFAS in the late 1990s and early 2000s, leading to a drop in exposure and blood levels as a result, said Kirk. "We've seen declines in the levels of PFAS in people's blood since 2000," he said. "So we've had nearly a 10-fold decrease in the levels of PFAS in the blood of Australians, and that continues to decrease." He said that unless you're working in one of the industries that are highly exposed, you probably don't have levels that are of concern. However, he noted anxiety in specific communities like at Wreck Bay on the NSW south coast, where an Aboriginal community believe a "cancer cluster" is due to PFAS contamination caused by the Department of Defence. "I think we do need to understand better to assist those communities and also provide better information for the wider community and government to make good policy."
ABC News
13 hours ago
- ABC News
Agriculture Victoria declares end of H7N8 avian influenza outbreak
Poultry farmers are once again able to move birds across north-east Victoria without restriction after Agriculture Victoria declared an end to the latest avian influenza outbreak in the state. In February, detections of the H7N8 bird flu strain were found on four commercial properties near Euroa. The outbreak meant hundreds of thousands of birds had to be euthanised, while zones were set up that restricted the movement of birds, bird products and poultry equipment around the region. Victoria's acting chief veterinary officer Sally Salmon said work by Agriculture Victoria meant those restrictions could be lifted, and thanked the poultry industry and local bird owners for their help in eradicating the outbreak. "Early reporting from the first affected business meant we could act quickly, and their ongoing co-operation with all elements of the response has been a major factor in achieving eradication," Dr Salmon said. She said more than 100 people had been deployed to clean and disinfect each site, as Agriculture Victoria officers visited 350 properties, took 20,600 samples, and completed 21,500 tests for the virus. The Euroa incident was the second outbreak of avian influenza in a year, with the first outbreak occurring in May 2024, affecting several properties in south-west Victoria. Victorian Farmers Federation Egg Group president and Werribee egg farmer Brian Ahmed said the end of the outbreak was welcome, and praised the work of Agriculture Victoria staff and farmers to eradicate the disease. But Mr Ahmed said a push towards expanding free-range chicken farming needed to be re-considered because he believed it could lead to further outbreaks. "As a farmer, I trust that the Agriculture Department has done their job and they wouldn't have lifted those restrictions unless they were quite comfortable that everything's been eradicated," he said. But he said the next avian influenza outbreak wasn't a matter of "if" but "when". "Unfortunately, government policies pushing our industry into non-cage systems with free-range [chickens] increases the risk of bird flu outbreaks. "The free-range system was designed for small-scale farming and there's nothing wrong with that. "But we're commercialising a farming system that was not designed for that, and we're going to have disease outbreaks like this more regularly, it's very clear." The caged-egg farming system is set to be phased out by 2036 under Commonwealth guidelines, but details on how the phase-out will occur are yet to be released.
