Imagine a disease in Australia infecting almost half of some of our communities. While some could live with the disease with no symptoms, up to 10 per cent of people develop complications including a particularly aggressive form of leukaemia resistant to chemotherapy that almost always kills its victims within a year.

And if you didnt get leukaemia, the virus could still damage your spinal cord, leaving you in a wheelchair, or cause eye disease that blinds you.

This would be treated as a national emergency. Little else would be able to permeate our political debate until the issue was sorted. There would be blanket media coverage and urgent debates in Parliament.

There is such a disease epidemic in parts of Australia today. Small shafts of media coverage penetrate occasionally but, by and large, most Australians are blissfully unaware of this health crisis.

Why? Well mainly because its happening in central Australia and, frankly, because the disease almost exclusively hits Indigenous Australians.

HTLV-1 is a virus that infects the same immune cells as HIV, and infects almost half the adults in some remote communities. While not prominent in Australia, our comparatively high rates have been noticed around the world.

Central Australia has the highest recorded prevalence of HTLV-1 in the world. A 45 per cent infection rate in communities is shocking to me, Britains leading specialist clinician on the disease, Graham Taylor, has said.

There is no known cure. But it doesnt need to be this way. While the virus is believed to have been around for thousands of years, it was identified in 1979, before the discovery of the related HIV. HTLV-1 is also spread through sexual transmission, blood transfusions or needle sharing, and by breastfeeding.

Because of the severity of the disease it causes, and its impact in developed countries, HIV research rightly became a global priority and now can be managed much more effectively.

But HTLV-1 receives little attention. And, with a couple of worthy exceptions within research facilities, almost none of the research happens here. The federal government has a taskforce thinking about the issue with an $8 million budget. Thats worthy, but its nowhere near enough and its nowhere near enough of an urgent national priority.

We all know we face so far intractable challenges when it comes to Indigenous health. Indigenous Australians are twice as likely to die of a respiratory disease (three times more likely in remote Australia) and are 40 per cent more likely to die of cancer.

This hidden epidemic might be playing a role in increasing the health gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. Eleven years after Kevin Rudd set the target of closing the gap of life expectancy between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians by 2031, the gap is widening as small gains by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are outpaced by gains of non-Indigenous Australians.

Parliament meets once a year to hear from the Prime Minister of the day about the (lack of) progress in closing the gap. All members genuinely lament the disappointing reports, then we move on to the next issue.

Against this background, in real terms, health expenditure on Indigenous Australians fell 2 per cent between 2008 and 2016 while it has risen 10 per cent on non-Indigenous Australians. Reflecting the difficulties in providing an adequate workforce in remote Australia, there is only one infectious disease specialist based in central Australia, an area covering a million square kilometres. We can and must do better.

The fact there is no cure for HTLV-1 should not be an excuse for inaction. On the contrary, it should be a spur to greater action. There are at least three things that can be done.

First, we need to educate. Japan is the only other developed nation facing widespread HTLV-1 but it has embarked on a public information campaign to hamper its spread. Making sure that health literacy campaigns for HTLV-1 are developed in a way that is culturally appropriate for Aboriginal communities is especially critical. Despite its spread through sexual transmission, there is no public awareness campaign that educates young people of the risks.

We also need a greater focus on testing. We wont beat this disease without a much better understanding of its impact and spread. For example, the number of babies being infected with this virus and the risk factors for transmission from mothers to their children in Australia are not known, so HTLV-1 is not included in antenatal screening throughout central Australia.

Finally, Australia should be leading the charge for a cure. We have a $20 billion Medical Research Future Fund. We have world-leading researchers. We need national will to tackle it.

Perhaps if we had an Indigenous voice to Parliament, we would be reminded more constantly of this health challenge for our first peoples. In the meantime, lets lift the issue in the national consciousness.

Chris Bowen is the oppositions health spokesperson.

This opinion piece was original published in The Australian, on Wednesday, 7 August 2019.