The Northern Rivers Times
November 16, 2023
44 HEALTH & SENIORS NEWS
Allowing retirees to joint Chemotherapy treatments and their effects the aged care workforce without pension penalty Article 6 a win-win The nation’s retirees should be able to return to work without losing pension and other retirements – and pay tax like everyone else - to help fix a critical workforce shortage in the aged care sector. HammondCare CEO Mike Baird, a former NSW Premier, called for reforms to pension and superannuation rules to allow pensioners with limited wealth to go back to work in industries facing worker shortages, including aged care. Mr Baird, who called for a change in a speech to the Aged and Community Care Providers Association (ACCPA) national conference, said it was time to make it easier for older people of pension age who want to work to do so. “Given that the aged care sector is crying out for workers, while also facing an upcoming tsunami of demand, I
believe it’s high time we make it easier for older workers to step back in from retirement,” Mr Baird said. Reform to make it easier for retirees to work in the aged care sector was part of an “hourglass” solution for workplace shortages that aimed to get more younger workers, such as school leavers, into the sector as well. “Even though one in five retirees would consider re-entering the workforce – a valuable group of people with a lifetime of skills and experience – there are several barriers for them to negotiate,” he said. “Apart from ageism and sometimes a need to upskill, especially digitally, the bigger ones are the pension and superannuation rules.” Mr Baird said broadly speaking pensioners lose about 50 cents of their fortnightly pension for every dollar earned over
the income threshold. Working too much over consecutive fortnights can lead to the pension quickly reducing, and reinstating the pension is never as quick. Medication subsidies can be lost, and partner pensions may also be reduced or lost. “One solution could be to exempt employment income completely for aged care workers (and other sectors that have a critical workforce shortage) from the aged pension income test,” he said. “This would mean that pensioners with limited work can work without losing their pension, and without a reporting burden (although taxation would still apply on as normal).” Mr Baird said the outcome would be a win-win with older workers supplementing their income while helping make the future of aged care “look a whole lot brighter”. A recent report by the Commonwealth Committee for Economic Development, Duty of care: Meeting the aged care workforce challenge, estimated the aged care sector needed at least 17,000 more direct aged-care workers each year in the next decade just to meet basic standards of care.
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In the last article, I discussed how cancer tumours deregulate our energy systems to sustain prolific growth and two lifestyle factors that have science-based evidence showing various ways they increase and promote the risk of cancer in not only the consumer but also those who come into contact with the byproducts of these factors. In this article, I will discuss chemotherapy treatments and how they affect cancer tumours. Chemotherapy Chemotherapy is one of the most common and wellknown pharmaceutical treatments for cancer tumours. Chemotherapy is a systemic treatment, meaning it travels throughout the whole system of the patient to which it is administered. Chemotherapy is used as either a primary treatment, treatment to shrink a tumour before surgery (called neoadjuvant treatment) or after an initial treatment or surgery regime has occurred (called adjuvant treatment). Chemotherapy can also be used in a palliation situation to help reduce pain, increase mobility, and give quality of life over the final stages of a journey. Chemotherapy drugs have different actions in the cell cycle of a cancer tumour. Each chemotherapy drug has a specific role or target on the tumour, which often leads to multiple drug treatments in a regime targeting varying parts or hallmarks of the tumour. An example is the use
of Docetaxal in prostate cancer treatment. Prostate tumours can grow incredibly fast, sustaining uncontrolled proliferation. Docetaxal specifically targets tumour growth by blocking the cell receptor that stimulates that growth. Think of this in the sense that someone has sent a specifically addressed letter and the Docetaxal blocks the address from being seen and as such no message or mail gets through. Our cells and chemotherapy All of our cells have two basic components that are often targeted with chemotherapy. The first is a ligand, which is a signalling protein that has been created due to some type of stimulus. For example, when we exercise (the stimulus) our body sends signals (hormones, a combination of our nervous system and hormones (neoendocrine) or neurological) to create ligands which spread out to our muscle cells having them repair and strengthen. In the case of the tumour, it is a signal to have the cell divide and continue growth. The second component is the cell receptor which is on the surface of a cell. This receptor is specific to the ligand being produced and in tumour cells there may be an over-expression (a greater amount created) on the outside of a cell. This then enables greater stimulus of the process that has been signalled. Some examples of chemotherapy targeting are Bevacizumab (brand name Avastin) which targets the the ligand that stimulates
vascular growth called Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor (VEGF). Bevacizumab will attach to the VEGF ligand making it inactive and unable to attach to a receptor. Tyrosine Kinase receptors on the outside of the cell can be targeted by drugs such as Erlotinib (brand name Tarceva) and Getfitinib (brand name Iressa). These drugs find the tumour cells and attach to the receptor, stopping the process. It is worth noting that these drugs will not only target tumour cells, but healthy cells as well. That is one of the downsides of having a systemic treatment. On diagnosis, patienttargeted therapy involving pathology analysis of the specific tumour cell gives particular details of the cell type and how to target treatment. The tumour cells can become aware of this treatment when administered and change and adapt processes to survive. Treatment may work initially; however, it will need to be tweaked and changed over time. The cancer tumour cell is a classic example of a pathogen that is living off its host and is an incredibly insidious organism. In the next article I will cover the activation and invasion (metastasis) hallmarks of cancer tumour cells and the ways we can reduce the risk of this through exercise and good health. If you would like more information, you can email me at david. ba.hoffmann@gmail. com or by telephone on 0417 190 088.
