Better health and ageing for all Australians

Health Emergency Preparedness and Response

Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Media Centre

This page contains contact details for the Department of Health and Ageing's Media Unit and information for the media on how to access information during a health emergency.

In this section:

    Media Unit Hotline
    Call 02 6289 5027

    Email address
    mediaunit@health.gov.au

    Public Health Information Hotline
    Call 1800 004 599

    National Security Hotline
    1800 123 400

    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 (Professor John Horvath) 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: mediaunit@health.gov.au

    Media Releases and Speeches

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