Humble ham sandwich back on the menu amid South Australia's junk food advertising ban

What we know about the rare bat virus that has claimed a fourth life

9 News

16 minutes ago

9 News

What we know about the rare bat virus that has claimed a fourth life

Your web browser is no longer supported. To improve your experience update it here Australia has recorded its fourth death of the bat lyssavirus — a very rare and fatal virus that can lay dormant for years. It is the fourth case in Australia and the first in New South Wales. Here's everything we know about the virus. A man from northern New South Wales had died several months after being hospitalised with a bite. (Getty) Australian bat lyssavirus (ABLV) is a very rare virus that circulates in bats and is closely related to rabies. It can spread to humans if they are bitten or scratched, or if bat saliva comes in contact with the eyes, nose, mouth or any broken skin. "To infect a human, the virus needs to pass from the bat's saliva into a wound in the skin," University of Sydney's wildlife disease ecologist Dr Alison Peel said. There is no risk if you live or walk near a bat roosting area. ABLV was first identified in 1996 and there has only been four cases since; three in Queensland and one in New South Wales. It has not been found in bats outside of Australia but overseas bats can carry other forms of lyssaviruses, including rabies. Any bat in Australia, including flying foxes, fruit bats and insect-eating microbats, can potentially carry ABLV. But, according to Peel, the number of bats infected by the virus is typically very low. "Studies have looked for the virus in thousands of healthy bats and failed to find it," she said. Any bat in Australia can potentially carry ABLV. (Getty) It is hard to tell whether a bat is carrying the virus, as they do not appear or behave any differently than an uninfected bat. "Like humans and other animals, infected bats may become sick and die, however, some bats may appear unaffected," Peel said. "So, you can't always tell just by looking at a bat whether it's infected or not." Symptoms are similar to those caused by rabies and can start off like the flu. This may include a headache, fever and fatigue. The illness can rapidly progress to paralysis, delirium, seizures and death typically within one to two weeks. It is also hard to tell when you contracted the virus as symptoms can start anytime from a few days to several years after infection. Only trained, protected and vaccinated wildlife handlers should be interacting with bats. (Getty Images/iStockphoto) ABLV can be fatal if it is not treated immediately. Health Direct advises anyone who is scratched or bitten by a bat to wash the wound with soap and water for at least 15 minutes, apply an antiseptic with an anti-virus action and get medical help as soon as possible. ABLV does not have its own vaccine but can be treated with a combination of rabies immunoglobulin and rabies vaccinations. There is no treatment for the virus once symptoms have started. "It is incredibly rare for the virus to transmit to humans, but once symptoms of lyssavirus start in people who are scratched or bitten by an infected bat, sadly there is no effective treatment," NSW Health Director in Health Protection Keira Glasgow said. The simple answer is to avoid touching any bats. Only trained, protected and vaccinated wildlife handlers should be interacting with bats. health New South Wales queensland national Australia wildlife Disease CONTACT US Property News: Sixteen-person rental sparks outrage in US.

‘I felt numb': Parents grapple with guilt and horror after childcare abuse allegations

The Age

2 hours ago

The Age

‘I felt numb': Parents grapple with guilt and horror after childcare abuse allegations

How do you explain a syphilis test to a child? It was an unimaginable conundrum that a Melbourne mother faced earlier this week when she had to tell her seven- and nine-year-old sons that they needed to be tested for a raft of sexually transmitted diseases. 'I just explained that we needed to get them checked out for an infection,' said Gemma, using an assumed name to protect her identity. 'I left it at that.' Gemma and her children are among 2600 Victorian families whose trust in the childcare sector was shattered on Tuesday when they were contacted by the Health Department and informed that an educator who had worked at their centres had been charged with sexually abusing infants and children in his care. That educator – Joshua Dale Brown – faces more than 70 charges, including sexually penetrating a child under 12, attempting to sexually penetrate a child under 12, sexually assaulting a child under 16 and producing child abuse material. He worked at 20 centres across Melbourne and Geelong from 2017 until May this year. Following allegations that Brown contaminated food served to the children with his bodily fluids, authorities recommended that 1200 children who had attended these centres be screened for sexually transmitted diseases. It's a nightmarish situation that no parent wants to experience – discovering they have entrusted their children to the care of an alleged abuser. It is also a scenario that has brought up feelings of guilt, horror and anxiety among the millions of Australian parents who rely on childcare centres to take care of their children so that they can work. How could this happen? 'I felt numb,' Gemma said of her reaction to the news that the alleged abuser had cared for two of her children over several months at a childcare centre in Melbourne's west. She had initially dismissed the Department of Health email – informing her of the abuse allegations and the need to get her children tested for sexually transmitted infections – as spam. It wasn't until she read about the sex abuse charges in this masthead that the devastating news sunk in. 'The world stopped,' she said. 'They are so little and vulnerable. I trusted them to look after them.' Brown is accused of abusing eight children, aged between five months and two years, while he worked at the G8 Education-owned Creative Garden Early Learning Centre in Point Cook between April 2022 and January 2023. These babies and children were so young that they did not have the language to communicate what allegedly happened to them, or even know what constituted child abuse. Brown was charged as a result of a 'proactive' police investigation that was triggered by the alleged discovery of child abuse material in his possession. The revelations have thrust the multibillion-dollar childcare sector into crisis, prompting the Victorian government to announce two reviews and a suite of reforms, including a ban on mobile phones at childcare centres. But experts in the sector are calling for further changes to protect children and the integrity of the system. 'There's been a lot of focus on children's safety … but it's time to speed it up,' said Sam Page, the chief executive of Early Childhood Australia, the nation's peak early childhood advocacy organisation. 'This is devastating for children, families, the education teams who worked at those services and the profession more broadly.' Page and many others would like to see a national system for working-with-children checks – a recommendation of the 2015 Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. The current system is a patchwork of different laws in different states and only captures someone when they are convicted of a criminal offence. Brown had a valid working-with-children check while working across the 20 centres. Loading 'We need it to be a much tougher, national system,' said Page. 'We can't wait until someone is convicted of a criminal offence to stop them working with children. We need reportable conduct schemes where we can cancel someone's working with children based on inappropriate behaviour, risk factors and poor practice.' The issue has been put on the agenda of a meeting of Australian attorneys-general next month, and federal Education Minister Jason Clare admitted this week that, 'It's taken too long to do the work necessary to make sure that our working with children check system is up to scratch.' Experts are also calling for a register of early childhood educators – similar to the schemes that exist for teachers. NSW was already acting on concerns about failures in the early childhood education system, particularly allegations of physical abuse. A review by former deputy ombudsman Chris Wheeler, released in late June, recommended CCTV cameras, an independent child care regulator, and a streamlined reporting mechanism that reduced confusion about whether to share concerns with police, child protection or employers. NSW will trial CCTV cameras, and is also supporting a national effort to set up a national register of workers, so workers who have raised suspicions could not easily jump to another employer or to another state. University of Melbourne early childhood expert Associate Professor Kay Margetts would also like to see changes that mandate a minimum of at least two staff members to supervise children at any given time. 'If you've got a minimum of two staff, you should be able to watch each other and know what each other is doing,' she said. She's not convinced that an overhaul of the working-with-children check scheme will address the problem. 'How can you tell if somebody is a paedophile or not?' she asked. 'There's no blood test. It is so difficult.' Former Affinity Education manager and now early childhood consultant Cheyanne Carter started a petition this week calling on the federal government to close a legislative gap that allows a sole educator to be left alone with children. She said that while there were minimum educator-to-child ratios, there was nothing explicitly stopping sole educators from being left alone with a group of children. 'Essentially, it means an educator can be alone with four babies, and they are complying with required ratios,' she said. She believes that always having educators working in pairs or more would stamp out abuse in centres. 'It could have stopped this – there would have always been eyes on them. It also holds providers accountable.' She has calculated that ensuring educators never work alone with children would cost an average of an additional $1200 a week for centres. She says some high-quality centres are already doing this. 'If they can move children around to save money, they can move children around to protect children,' she said. In the wake of the allegations, some preschools have started advising educators, particularly men, to stand further back from bathrooms while they are being used by children. They have also been told to change children, who have wet themselves, in communal areas. They have also advised educators to not let children sit on their legs or between them. 'We are getting the male teachers to be that extra bit careful about what they do with the children,' one preschool insider said. 'It's about protecting them and their integrity and avoiding any situation where people could raise concerns.' Goodstart, one of the country's largest childcare providers, has started installing CCTV across its centres to enhance safety and security. There will be strict privacy controls in place, a spokeswoman said, and the technology won't be installed in bathrooms or change areas. 'CCTV has a role to play, but it will never be a replacement for active supervision of every child by professional educators,' the spokeswoman said. 'Governments will have to consider how they fund a national program to support the rollout of CCTV in early learning centres as the costs are extremely high, in terms of installation costs, secure storage of data and ongoing monitoring or review.' Affinity Education, which owned nine centres that employed Brown, confirmed it had already introduced CCTV at some centres, but didn't share which ones. It already has policies prohibiting mobiles and other devices while educators work with children, a spokeswoman said. Loading She said Affinity met stringent educator-to-child ratios, or exceeded them. Meanwhile, G8 Education, which operates the Point Cook centre where the alleged abuse took place, said it was appalled by what had allegedly occurred and the safety of children was its highest priority. They did not respond to questions about whether they would roll out CCTV, but said they had banned devices from their centres. The sexual abuse allegations against Joshua Brown are the latest in a long string of incidents involving early childhood educators. Last year, a former childcare worker who abused nearly 70 children in Queensland and Italy between 2003 and 2022 was sentenced to life imprisonment. And in January, daycare educator Quoc Phu Tong pleaded guilty to touching a young boy on the groin and bottom, over the boy's clothes, at the Only About Children centre in Seaforth in Sydney. Unlike these cases, the charges levelled against Brown have triggered an unprecedented public health response due to allegations he contaminated food that was potentially served to hundreds of children with his bodily fluids. But the response from authorities has not been without problems – some parents received contradictory information about what infections their children needed to be tested for. At least two families told this masthead they had received messages from the Health Department urging them to be checked for gonorrhea and chlamydia, only for another message to be sent days later telling them their children also needed to be tested for potentially deadly syphilis. Issues have also arisen about the publicly released dates Brown worked at childcare centres, with claims he worked at Essendon's Papilio Early Learning centre for at least six months longer than initially reported online by authorities. A Victoria Police spokeswoman said it was working though further information from childcare providers about Brown's employment history, and would update the government website when this was complete. The fallout from the sex abuse charges levelled against Brown also had a devastating impact on the morale and motivation of male educators working in the sector, according to Ramesh Shrestha, who runs a support network for male childcare workers, Thriving Educators Aspiring Male Professionals. 'It is a huge blow,' he said. 'There is guilt because it is someone from the male educators community ... they are thinking, 'Should I just leave the sector?'' Loading The percentage of men working in the childcare sector in Australia is about 4 per cent, but Shrestha fears male educators will leave the profession in droves after this latest incident. He sent out an online wellbeing check to members this week and half of the educators reported that they felt stressed and overwhelmed. About 5 per cent said they felt low and needed support. One mother, whose children attended a centre where Brown worked, said she hated the suggestion (which has been cropping up on social media) that men should be banned from the profession. 'I think that is a horrible proposition, and it is unfair,' she said. 'It is like saying all men are rapists – that is a knee-jerk reaction. I support men continuing to work in daycare. Positive male role models are important in society.' But another mother, whose daughter attended a different centre where Brown worked and also did not want to be identified for privacy reasons, no longer trusts male educators to look after her daughters. 'I want an option to tick in their online system that states I don't want a male taking care of my girls,' she said. 'I don't care what anyone says, I want my partner, the girls' father to be the only other male to change their nappy, give them cuddles and console them when needed. It doesn't sit right with me that a male look after such vulnerable children.' She would also like managers at Affinity Education to inform parents about casual staff tasked with looking after their children. 'We're paying a small fortune for them to look after our children; we should have every right to know who is there, regardless of [whether they are a] temp, casual or permanent.' She had been trying to painstakingly piece together details of what happened at the centre during the three days that Brown worked there. 'They informed me that he had his hands in his pockets the whole time,' she said of the advice she had received from her centre. She describes the past week as a rollercoaster of emotions, including shock, horror, sadness, anger and shame. 'The feeling of guilt, for putting my girls into childcare, paying for them to be taken care of by an alleged monster … The feeling of helplessness, not being able to protect my girls more, not being able to change or stop this from happening. Because my partner and I have to work – we can't afford to live off one salary.'

Sydney Morning Herald

2 hours ago

Sydney Morning Herald

‘I felt numb': Parents grapple with guilt and horror after childcare abuse allegations

How do you explain a syphilis test to a child? It was an unimaginable conundrum that a Melbourne mother faced earlier this week when she had to tell her seven- and nine-year-old sons that they needed to be tested for a raft of sexually transmitted diseases. 'I just explained that we needed to get them checked out for an infection,' said Gemma, using an assumed name to protect her identity. 'I left it at that.' Gemma and her children are among 2600 Victorian families whose trust in the childcare sector was shattered on Tuesday when they were contacted by the Health Department and informed that an educator who had worked at their centres had been charged with sexually abusing infants and children in his care. That educator – Joshua Dale Brown – faces more than 70 charges, including sexually penetrating a child under 12, attempting to sexually penetrate a child under 12, sexually assaulting a child under 16 and producing child abuse material. He worked at 20 centres across Melbourne and Geelong from 2017 until May this year. Following allegations that Brown contaminated food served to the children with his bodily fluids, authorities recommended that 1200 children who had attended these centres be screened for sexually transmitted diseases. It's a nightmarish situation that no parent wants to experience – discovering they have entrusted their children to the care of an alleged abuser. It is also a scenario that has brought up feelings of guilt, horror and anxiety among the millions of Australian parents who rely on childcare centres to take care of their children so that they can work. How could this happen? 'I felt numb,' Gemma said of her reaction to the news that the alleged abuser had cared for two of her children over several months at a childcare centre in Melbourne's west. She had initially dismissed the Department of Health email – informing her of the abuse allegations and the need to get her children tested for sexually transmitted infections – as spam. It wasn't until she read about the sex abuse charges in this masthead that the devastating news sunk in. 'The world stopped,' she said. 'They are so little and vulnerable. I trusted them to look after them.' Brown is accused of abusing eight children, aged between five months and two years, while he worked at the G8 Education-owned Creative Garden Early Learning Centre in Point Cook between April 2022 and January 2023. These babies and children were so young that they did not have the language to communicate what allegedly happened to them, or even know what constituted child abuse. Brown was charged as a result of a 'proactive' police investigation that was triggered by the alleged discovery of child abuse material in his possession. The revelations have thrust the multibillion-dollar childcare sector into crisis, prompting the Victorian government to announce two reviews and a suite of reforms, including a ban on mobile phones at childcare centres. But experts in the sector are calling for further changes to protect children and the integrity of the system. 'There's been a lot of focus on children's safety … but it's time to speed it up,' said Sam Page, the chief executive of Early Childhood Australia, the nation's peak early childhood advocacy organisation. 'This is devastating for children, families, the education teams who worked at those services and the profession more broadly.' Page and many others would like to see a national system for working-with-children checks – a recommendation of the 2015 Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. The current system is a patchwork of different laws in different states and only captures someone when they are convicted of a criminal offence. Brown had a valid working-with-children check while working across the 20 centres. Loading 'We need it to be a much tougher, national system,' said Page. 'We can't wait until someone is convicted of a criminal offence to stop them working with children. We need reportable conduct schemes where we can cancel someone's working with children based on inappropriate behaviour, risk factors and poor practice.' The issue has been put on the agenda of a meeting of Australian attorneys-general next month, and federal Education Minister Jason Clare admitted this week that, 'It's taken too long to do the work necessary to make sure that our working with children check system is up to scratch.' Experts are also calling for a register of early childhood educators – similar to the schemes that exist for teachers. NSW was already acting on concerns about failures in the early childhood education system, particularly allegations of physical abuse. A review by former deputy ombudsman Chris Wheeler, released in late June, recommended CCTV cameras, an independent child care regulator, and a streamlined reporting mechanism that reduced confusion about whether to share concerns with police, child protection or employers. NSW will trial CCTV cameras, and is also supporting a national effort to set up a national register of workers, so workers who have raised suspicions could not easily jump to another employer or to another state. University of Melbourne early childhood expert Associate Professor Kay Margetts would also like to see changes that mandate a minimum of at least two staff members to supervise children at any given time. 'If you've got a minimum of two staff, you should be able to watch each other and know what each other is doing,' she said. She's not convinced that an overhaul of the working-with-children check scheme will address the problem. 'How can you tell if somebody is a paedophile or not?' she asked. 'There's no blood test. It is so difficult.' Former Affinity Education manager and now early childhood consultant Cheyanne Carter started a petition this week calling on the federal government to close a legislative gap that allows a sole educator to be left alone with children. She said that while there were minimum educator-to-child ratios, there was nothing explicitly stopping sole educators from being left alone with a group of children. 'Essentially, it means an educator can be alone with four babies, and they are complying with required ratios,' she said. She believes that always having educators working in pairs or more would stamp out abuse in centres. 'It could have stopped this – there would have always been eyes on them. It also holds providers accountable.' She has calculated that ensuring educators never work alone with children would cost an average of an additional $1200 a week for centres. She says some high-quality centres are already doing this. 'If they can move children around to save money, they can move children around to protect children,' she said. In the wake of the allegations, some preschools have started advising educators, particularly men, to stand further back from bathrooms while they are being used by children. They have also been told to change children, who have wet themselves, in communal areas. They have also advised educators to not let children sit on their legs or between them. 'We are getting the male teachers to be that extra bit careful about what they do with the children,' one preschool insider said. 'It's about protecting them and their integrity and avoiding any situation where people could raise concerns.' Goodstart, one of the country's largest childcare providers, has started installing CCTV across its centres to enhance safety and security. There will be strict privacy controls in place, a spokeswoman said, and the technology won't be installed in bathrooms or change areas. 'CCTV has a role to play, but it will never be a replacement for active supervision of every child by professional educators,' the spokeswoman said. 'Governments will have to consider how they fund a national program to support the rollout of CCTV in early learning centres as the costs are extremely high, in terms of installation costs, secure storage of data and ongoing monitoring or review.' Affinity Education, which owned nine centres that employed Brown, confirmed it had already introduced CCTV at some centres, but didn't share which ones. It already has policies prohibiting mobiles and other devices while educators work with children, a spokeswoman said. Loading She said Affinity met stringent educator-to-child ratios, or exceeded them. Meanwhile, G8 Education, which operates the Point Cook centre where the alleged abuse took place, said it was appalled by what had allegedly occurred and the safety of children was its highest priority. They did not respond to questions about whether they would roll out CCTV, but said they had banned devices from their centres. The sexual abuse allegations against Joshua Brown are the latest in a long string of incidents involving early childhood educators. Last year, a former childcare worker who abused nearly 70 children in Queensland and Italy between 2003 and 2022 was sentenced to life imprisonment. And in January, daycare educator Quoc Phu Tong pleaded guilty to touching a young boy on the groin and bottom, over the boy's clothes, at the Only About Children centre in Seaforth in Sydney. Unlike these cases, the charges levelled against Brown have triggered an unprecedented public health response due to allegations he contaminated food that was potentially served to hundreds of children with his bodily fluids. But the response from authorities has not been without problems – some parents received contradictory information about what infections their children needed to be tested for. At least two families told this masthead they had received messages from the Health Department urging them to be checked for gonorrhea and chlamydia, only for another message to be sent days later telling them their children also needed to be tested for potentially deadly syphilis. Issues have also arisen about the publicly released dates Brown worked at childcare centres, with claims he worked at Essendon's Papilio Early Learning centre for at least six months longer than initially reported online by authorities. A Victoria Police spokeswoman said it was working though further information from childcare providers about Brown's employment history, and would update the government website when this was complete. The fallout from the sex abuse charges levelled against Brown also had a devastating impact on the morale and motivation of male educators working in the sector, according to Ramesh Shrestha, who runs a support network for male childcare workers, Thriving Educators Aspiring Male Professionals. 'It is a huge blow,' he said. 'There is guilt because it is someone from the male educators community ... they are thinking, 'Should I just leave the sector?'' Loading The percentage of men working in the childcare sector in Australia is about 4 per cent, but Shrestha fears male educators will leave the profession in droves after this latest incident. He sent out an online wellbeing check to members this week and half of the educators reported that they felt stressed and overwhelmed. About 5 per cent said they felt low and needed support. One mother, whose children attended a centre where Brown worked, said she hated the suggestion (which has been cropping up on social media) that men should be banned from the profession. 'I think that is a horrible proposition, and it is unfair,' she said. 'It is like saying all men are rapists – that is a knee-jerk reaction. I support men continuing to work in daycare. Positive male role models are important in society.' But another mother, whose daughter attended a different centre where Brown worked and also did not want to be identified for privacy reasons, no longer trusts male educators to look after her daughters. 'I want an option to tick in their online system that states I don't want a male taking care of my girls,' she said. 'I don't care what anyone says, I want my partner, the girls' father to be the only other male to change their nappy, give them cuddles and console them when needed. It doesn't sit right with me that a male look after such vulnerable children.' She would also like managers at Affinity Education to inform parents about casual staff tasked with looking after their children. 'We're paying a small fortune for them to look after our children; we should have every right to know who is there, regardless of [whether they are a] temp, casual or permanent.' She had been trying to painstakingly piece together details of what happened at the centre during the three days that Brown worked there. 'They informed me that he had his hands in his pockets the whole time,' she said of the advice she had received from her centre. She describes the past week as a rollercoaster of emotions, including shock, horror, sadness, anger and shame. 'The feeling of guilt, for putting my girls into childcare, paying for them to be taken care of by an alleged monster … The feeling of helplessness, not being able to protect my girls more, not being able to change or stop this from happening. Because my partner and I have to work – we can't afford to live off one salary.'

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What we know about the rare bat virus that has claimed a fourth life

‘I felt numb': Parents grapple with guilt and horror after childcare abuse allegations

‘I felt numb': Parents grapple with guilt and horror after childcare abuse allegations

Humble ham sandwich back on the menu amid South Australia's junk food advertising ban

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What we know about the rare bat virus that has claimed a fourth life

‘I felt numb': Parents grapple with guilt and horror after childcare abuse allegations

‘I felt numb': Parents grapple with guilt and horror after childcare abuse allegations

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