Australians living with allergies will have their conditions better diagnosed, managed, and prevented under new funding by the Albanese Government. The aim is to have fewer people getting ill, hospitalised, or dying because of allergies.
The Labor Government is providing a funding package of almost $27 million to establish a National Allergy Centre of Excellence and a National Allergy Council to address allergic disease and anaphylaxis in Australia.
This package includes $16.6 million to establish the National Allergy Council to support the National Allergy Strategy. The Council will be focussing on preventing allergies and supporting patients to manage their allergies.
The funding package also includes $10.2 million, that will go to the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute to establish the allergy centre by expanding its Centre for Food and Allergies Research to centralise research on food, drug, vaccine, insect, and pollen allergies. The centre will bring the best researchers together to analyse evidence for the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment/management of allergies.
In addition to this funding package, the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute is also set to receive $2.5 million in funding through the National Health and Medical Research Council’s (NHMRC) Centres of Research Excellence (CRE) scheme. The CRE – Towards eradicating food allergy: from population to precision prevention, early intervention, and management – will build capacity and capability in this critical area of research.
Australia is known as the allergy capital of the world. Hay fever and allergies affect 4.6 million Australians or around 19.3 per cent of the population.
The full media release can be read here.
