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November 9, 2008
One of the pillars of the initial phase of the Northern Territory Emergency Response from a health point of view was the health checks carried out on up to 17 000 children aged 15 years and under in 73 target communities. The health checks were designed to bridge the seventeen-year mortality gap for all Indigenous people. By 19 October 2007, medical teams had already completed checks on more than 3200 children.
Golding
What happens after the health checks? Those who are sick need treatment. How is that to happen? Fly in specialists?
William J H Glasson, a member of the emergency response taskforce, wrote in the Medical Journal of Australia:
The findings of these checks are sobering, and underline the need for the intervention. We already knew that the children in many of these communities had very high rates of chronic diseases, but have found that the situation is even worse than the official picture. The Indigenous population has a burden of disease up to six times higher than in the non-Indigenous population.
Probably 80% of the Indigenous children have middle-ear diseases. Intestinal parasites and skin infections are rife. An absence of water for washing — taps don’t run, toilets don’t flush, there is no soap — has led to skin hygiene so poor that pathogens thrive. This in turn contributes to the devastating levels of renal disease and heart disease, the latter particularly associated with rheumatic fever. Type 2 diabetes is also increasingly common in children.
The call has now gone out for health professionals, doctors, specialists and nurses to help out with the follow-up, but this type of approach to the delivery of needed health services is an emergency response and is not sustainable. Something more is needed.
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It is sad to see that a country as developed and rich as Australia still is unable to provide basic health services to its indigenous people. I understand that there are complications and limitations in terms of logistics, but it should not be that hard to provide basic services: clean water, adequate facilities, etc. This is how it was in the US for indigenous people 100 years ago - now there is a network of both indigenous run and federally run health facilities that have gotten rid of all of these types of diseases. Can Australia not do the same?