Rachel Carbonell

4 days ago | abc.net.au | Rachel Carbonell |Alison Branley

If Australia's new lung cancer screening program had been around earlier, Anne Fidler thinks she might have had a lot longer to live. "They probably would have caught it at stage 1 and not now at stage 4," the 62-year-old said. "In my case, it's incurable… it's just a matter of how much time I've got now."The Brisbane-based real estate agent, who used to smoke, went for an unrelated scan. That was when her lung cancer was picked up.

3 weeks ago | abc.net.au | Paige Cockburn |Caitlyn Gribbin |Rachel Carbonell

An alarming decline in childhood vaccination rates is a "wake-up call" for all levels of Australian government and the health sector, according to the peak body for doctors. President of the Australian Medical Association (AMA), Dr Danielle McMullen, said new figures released this week show we urgently "need to do more" to address the issue. "Perhaps as a country we've become complacent in trusting our really excellent vaccination rates," Dr McMullen said.

1 month ago | abc.net.au | Rachel Carbonell |Alison Branley

The number of older Australians presenting to emergency departments is steadily increasing, according to the Australian Medical Association. And data from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare shows they also account for almost half of all public hospital bed days nationally. It's one of the biggest challenges facing Australia's health system.

Feb 24, 2025 | abc.net.au | Rachel Carbonell |Loretta Florance |Jackson Worthington

When five-year-old Queensland twins Louis and Theo started school this year, they had an unusual boast: They were allowed to drink as much water as they liked. It's something most kids take for granted, but throughout their young lives, the Gold Coast boys had strictly limited their intake of water because they were born with kidney disease. "It's so difficult to stick to that — you're watching things like when you're doing your teeth, have I taken an extra sip?" the boys' mother Kath said.

Jan 19, 2025 | abc.net.au | Rachel Carbonell

New research has found nearly four in five Australian women aged between 18 and 44 say they've had 'problematic periods' in the last five years. Almost half of them reported missing days of work or study. The study estimates the economic burden of debilitating menstrual symptoms to be more than 14 billion dollars a year in Australia.