A Senate committee will probe the Abbott government's response to the worst Ebola outbreak in history, as Labor and the Greens question whether Australia's initial reluctance to act cost lives.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Labor's deputy leader and foreign affairs spokeswoman Tanya Plibersek wrote to Senate Select Committee on Health chairwoman Deborah O'Neill on Tuesday to propose the inquiry, which has the backing of Greens leader Richard Di Natale.
"There are a number of question marks hanging over the appropriateness of Australia's response to the Ebola crisis in west Africa," Ms Plibersek said.
"If there are lessons from the Australian government's response to this significant health crisis, we must learn them."
Foreign Minister Julie Bishop immediately hit out at her Labor counterpart, describing the inquiry as "the latest attempt by Tanya Plibersek to play politics with a humanitarian crisis".
The inquiry will examine the effectiveness of the Australian response, including its timing, value-for-money, the decision to outsource the response to a private company, and the contribution it made to building Australian and foreign capacity to respond to such crises in the future.
Australia was widely criticised by international aid organisations and health groups such as the Australian Medical Association for not sending health workers and other personnel to West Africa more quickly to tackle the 2014 outbreak, which claimed more than 11,000 lives, mostly in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea.
As early as September, the US, the United Kingdom, Liberia and Sierra Leone had requested Australia deploy personnel to West Africa to help fight the outbreak, but Australia resisted the calls on the grounds that it would not put health workers in danger until it had made arrangements for the treatment or evacuation of any Australians who contracted the virus.
In November, Prime Minister Tony Abbott announced his government would contract private healthcare provider Aspen Medical to staff and run a British-built Ebola treatment facility near the Sierra Leonean capital, Freetown.
The facility opened in December and closed on April 30 following the stabilisation of the outbreak. Over this period, the facility treated 216 patients. Of these, 156 were discharged, and 60 died.
Officials from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade told a Senate hearing last week that the final cost of the Aspen Medical contract was expected to be $18.2 million.
Ms Plibersek questioned why Australia's costs - which amount to more than $84,000 per patient - were so much higher than those incurred by organisations such as Medecins Sans Frontieres, which had an average cost per patient of about $10,000.
"Why did the Australian government spend about eight times more than Medecins Sans Frontieres to treat each patient?" Ms Plibersek said.
The US has also faced criticism for the effectiveness of its response. In April, the New York Times reported that the 11 treatment centres built by the US military had collectively treated just 28 Ebola patients, and nine of the centres had not treated a single Ebola patient, because the the number of Ebola cases had started to decline by the time the facilities opened.
Senator Di Natale, who travelled to Liberia and Sierra Leone during the outbreak, said that by delaying its response Australia had missed the height of the epidemic.
"Australia's response was very late and it was very modest, and there are real questions about whether that cost people's lives," he said.
Ms Bishop said that the government stood by its decision "to ensure that proper treatment and evacuation options were in place before sending Australian health workers into harm's way."
"Our decision was vindicated by the outcomes," she said.
