Australian children battling cancer will find it easier to access life-saving proton beam therapy overseas following immediate changes to the government’s grants process.
For years, families have faced a difficult and often distressing journey to secure funding for treatment abroad.
WATCH THE VIDEO ABOVE: More families to access radiation overseas as calls intensify to bring treatment here.
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Despite taxpayers already investing more than $100 million to build and operate a proton beam therapy facility in Adelaide, the technology is still not available in Australia.
The government has offered grants for families to travel overseas, with 78 of 89 Medical Overseas Treatment Program applications approved since 2021.
As part of this process, families have been required to provide detailed evidence proving why proton therapy was necessary for their child, a burden many described as unfair during such a critical time.
Now, the requirement for a comparative plan has now been scrapped.
Under the updated system, families no longer need to justify their need for the treatment.
The Health Department says the change will simplify the process and allow more children to benefit from proton beam therapy abroad.
The news has come too late for five-year-old Lenna Hosseini, who is battling a rare form of mouth cancer.
Doctors had recommended the little girl receive proton beam therapy overseas but in a bitter blow, Lenna’s application to head to the US was rejected.
Proton therapy is a precise treatment that can pinpoint a tumour, resulting in fewer side effects.
Photon therapy, the X-ray radiation we have in Australia, has a larger beam that kills the cancer but also the healthy cells around it.
Lenna’s family did not have the money to travel to America alone or the precious time to appeal the health department’s decision, opting for the less effective photon therapy treatment in Perth.
Now she is suffering significant and potentially life-altering side effects as a result.
Her mother Mahsa Shafiei is heartbroken.
“It is the hardest thing ever because I have to hide my tears as well and show her that it’s fine, this is just a normal treatment and every kid can go and have such a treatment,” she told 7NEWS.
“But in deep I know that this is not fair and she’s suffering because of the lack of treatments in Australia.”
An online fundraiser has been set up to assist the family.
Before the changes were announced, a health department spokesperson said it often denies requests for proton beam therapy “because an effective alternative treatment, photon therapy, is available in Australia, and the application did not demonstrate that radiation with protons would provide a significantly improved outcome”.
Shadow Health Minister Anne Ruston welcomed the eased restrictions but criticised the government for failing to provide proton beam therapy domestically.
“It is completely unacceptable that a child should have lifelong damage caused to them when the opportunity for that not to have happened should have been made available to them, but the government’s sitting on their hands,” Ruston said.
“(Proton) is a treatment that means that they’re likely not to suffer lifelong disability as a result of their treatment. It is completely unacceptable that the government is not delivering on this promise.”
The facility in Adelaide, built more than five years ago to house the country’s first proton beam machine, remains unused.
Advocates argue the government must move faster to bring the treatment locally, reducing the financial and emotional strain on families forced to travel internationally.
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