Photo: Molly Lucas has Type 1 Diabetes. (ABC News) Australia has a reputation as a healthy nation, with one of the highest life expectancies in the world, but a growing number of Australians are living with chronic illness. Ben Harris, a health policy expert at Victoria University’s Mitchell Institute, crunched the numbers from the latest National Health Survey and discovered that 11.4 million Australians, almost 50 per cent, now have a chronic disease. "That’s up from two in five just 10 years ago," he told 7.30. "About a third of chronic disease is preventable, yet we only spend 1.3 per cent of our health budget on preventing disease. "We need to do better with prevention and managing chronic disease. We need to start treating people, rather than treating diseases." ‘This system has to change’ Chronic illnesses include things like heart disease, diabetes, cancer, asthma, mental health and dementia, which […]