Queensland’s chief health officer Jeannette Young says fingerprick testing is helping Mount Isa get a better handle on the effects of lead in the community as the rate of the rate of lead in children decreases by half since 2007.
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Speaking after her annual visit to meet with the local Living With Lead Alliance, Dr Young said the new capillary blood lead fingerprick testing had greatly increased the number of children tested in a less invasive way.
“In the past to check their lead level they needed to have a venous test done – a blood sample taken,” Dr Young said.
“This can be scary for little children and can be difficult to do”.
Dr Young said the point of care fingerprint test was introduced in September 2016 and has enabled more children to be tested.
“We’ve shown that the fantastic work of the team in Mount Isa has led to over 500 children tested in the last 12 months, 170 through the old venous test process and another 400 through the capillary test,” she said.
“That means a quarter of the target group were tested and now that we’ve got it happening it will be a matter of refining it and getting it out to more places so more children can be tested.”
Dr Young said the ideal was to test every child in Mount Isa under the age of five at least once and to take the opportunity to discuss with parents what can be done to minimise the exposure to lead.
“That means washing down surfaces to remove dust and making sure children wash their hands particularly before eating,” she said.
“The results we are getting shows these things work.”
Over 500 children were tested in the period from September 2016 to June 2017 and 131 had a blood lead level higher than 5 µg/dL (micrograms per decilitre) which requires the hospital to follow up.
Testing has been done since 2007 and in the first test the mean BLL was 5 µg/dL. That has gradually reduced to 2.3 µg/dL in the last 12 months. Dr Young said the average BLL for children in Australia was “around two”.
Read more:
March 2016: Lead committee’s new scope
February 2016 Mount Isa not affected by new lead research
Derek Barry
Editor of the North West Star Mount Isa since January 2016. Prior to that, an editor at several regional southern Queensland newspapers. Passionate about telling local stories. Comes with a strange accent to due an Irish accident of birth.
Editor of the North West Star Mount Isa since January 2016. Prior to that, an editor at several regional southern Queensland newspapers. Passionate about telling local stories. Comes with a strange accent to due an Irish accident of birth.
