A nurse practitioner at the Mount Isa Sexual Health Clinic is the first in Australia to be certified for treating HIV under new government legislation.
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Through the Highly Specialised Drugs program announced in 2019, Dale Thompson is now certified to prescribe hepatitis B, hepatitis C and HIV medicines.
Mr Thompson said this meant that patients who needed these medications no longer had to wait up to two weeks for a specialist to come to Mount Isa.
"The change in legislation is a wonderful thing, these are highly specialised drugs which could only be prescribed by a specialised clinician," Mr Thompson said.
"However, now if a patient who is diagnosed and on treatment comes in and tells me their script is nearly up, they wont have to wait a fortnight for a specialist to come to town. I can assess them and write up a script straight away and it reduced the fragmentation of care."
Mr Thompson was proactive in signing up for the training and was the first to be certified in Australia.
He said there was a lot of HIV getting around the North West and he wanted to inform people of his testing service at Mount Isa Sexual Health.
"Per head per population Mount Isa does have high rates of HIV, I have about 23 people who I treat here," he said.
"We have people from right across North West HHS catchment, in remote areas, that are HIV positive and now they are all rally well engaged in care, which is important for their long-term health.
"There is no cure for HIV but there is very good, straight forward treatment, which includes taking a tablet everyday preventing the virus from being spread to other people."
Mr Thompson said he worked discretely with the patients to help reduce the stigma associated with HIV and sexually transmitted infections.
"You could live in a very remote community in the North West and still have excellent treatment," he said.
"We have people that live in remote NWHHS communities and we can assess them through telehealth. Then the nurses in those communities can do the blood tests and tests needed for those patients and I can provide the scripts. The pharmacy in Mount Isa can discretely send out the medication, there is only a name on an enclosed bag and then the patient only needs to collect it.
"The stigma is still huge around HIV and I wish it wasn't, because it is just another infection that is easily treatable now days."
Mr Thompson said Mount isa Sexual Health provided discretion and treatments for all sexual diseases or infections.
"We can check for any sexually transmitted diseases, people can walk into the clinic and be tested for gonorrhea, chlamydia and syphilis, hepatitis B, hepatitis V, HIV and bacterial infections," he said.
"A lot of sexually transmitted infections or diseases have little to no symptoms for years, so it can infect a lot of people. So we encourage anyone to come in and get tested, and help keep our community safe."
Mount Isa Sexual Health Clinic is located at 1 Barkly Highway (across from the swimming pool).
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Samantha Campbell
Samantha Campbell (nee Walton) has worked for regional and rural publications across New South Wales, Queensland and the Northern Territory. She is currently writing for the North Queensland Register based in North West Queensland. Email: samantha.campbell@austcommunitymedia.com.au
Samantha Campbell (nee Walton) has worked for regional and rural publications across New South Wales, Queensland and the Northern Territory. She is currently writing for the North Queensland Register based in North West Queensland. Email: samantha.campbell@austcommunitymedia.com.au
