Introduction

In any health emergency the media plays a significant role in keeping the public informed about the latest developments and is an extremely important tool for delivering health warnings and messages.

In a health emergency, such as national communicable disease outbreak, mass casualty incident or terrorist act, the Australian Government will be relying heavily on the media to assist in keeping the public informed.

Media Unit

The Media Unit Hotline is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. In an emergency it will be staffed by public affairs officers who will endeavour to promptly deal with your inquiries and requests for information and interviews.

Web Site

To assist media in a time of crisis, this website will be extensively used as a first line information source. It will be updated regularly with relevant information during an emergency.

To avoid overloading the Australian Chief Medical Officer who is the main national spokesperson during a health emergency, but who also needs to be directing the national health response, it is our intention to:

• post regular statements from the CMO on this site for the benefit of media
• incorporate broadcast quality sound bytes from a daily media conference which can be downloaded and used by media
• post pictures
• provide transcripts from media interviews
• promote the latest relevant health warnings or messages.

Resources and Fact Sheets

This section of the web site contains a range of information to assist the public and the media. The fact sheets contain information on a range of diseases and the organisations and mechanisms in place to deal with health emergency situations. We hope you find these fact sheets a valuable resource.

Feedback

Media are invited to contribute their views and ideas to make the media centre and the Health Emergency Preparedness and Response web site more relevant and useful to you. Please email your thoughts to: Media Unit (mediaunit@health.gov.au).

Media Releases and Speeches

There are currently no media releases relevant to this area.Top of page