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The Forum > Article Comments > Report card on Indigenous health: must do better > Comments

Report card on Indigenous health: must do better : Comments

By Chris Evans, published 18/4/2006

Indigenous health should be a national priority.

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The health of Indigenous Australians has long attracted media coverage. It is not enough, however, to make 'successful programs'our 'core activity'. We need to question what we don't know or more specifically, don't want to question. How is it that there is a lack of inquiry into the standard of care actually received by Indigenous people? How is it that in remote areas nurses are often left, with little clarification of their role, totally responsible for day to day health care? How is it that with an execeedingly high turnover, underprepared, working on call with frequent extensive and exhausing overtime, faced with threats and acts of violence and lacking management support or scrutiny of practice it is still left unquestioned how these nurses could provide any semblance of safe service? Why is it that we as health professionals and other service providers are unconcerned about our own part in allowing this to happen and how do we avoid looking within our own ranks for reasons that contribute to perpetuating the ill-health and social dislocation experienced by Indigenous people? These core problems must also be investigated and dealt with for the health of Indigenous people to 'improve'.
Posted by jenni, Thursday, 20 April 2006 3:22:21 PM
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No one seems to care all that much about indigenuos issues - only one post so far; why am I not surprised - now if they were Muslim! we would have a plethora of views. But as it is, the issue just slides off the table.

Evans is right but so far no government has developed a method to succesfully engage with or to deliver health systems to indigenous Australians.
Posted by sneekeepete, Thursday, 20 April 2006 4:09:13 PM
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It is true that there are basic solutions to basic problems in Aboriginal health, just as with all the other problems.

Aboriginal health is just one of many categories that have been systematically ignored since captain Cook.

Poor health statistics need to be understood in the context of invasion, genocide and colonisation, not simply to seek answers about what historical circumstances caused the problems but also to be able to identify that same process at play today, right here right now.

Imposed colonial modes of health service delivery, such as our present one, will result in the perpetuation of death and disease.

Aboriginal methodologies of health, including preventative health and crisis care, are the only ones that can properly connect with the lifestyles of Aboriginal people. Even on present funding, the Aboriginalisation of health services would improve Aboriginal health significantly, meanwhile Howard is mainstreaming Aboriginal health services.. Present models of Aboriginal health are just white colonial models with black staff. I am talking about Aboriginal notions of health which are as different from western medicine as accupuncture and eastern medicine is. Accupuncture operates at a high-tech 21st century mode for state hospitals in China for example. I am not talking about hocus-pocus, faith healers or other misunderstandings of holistic health regimes, just a different paradigm of proffessionalism with an acedemic history of 40,000 years or more, that is based on the unity of spiritual and physical health.

Those people, health proffessionals or not, who want to see improvements in Aboriginal health will have to join the political struggles of Aboriginal Australia to change the structures that presently institutionalse Aboriginal ill-health.
other wise they are just huffing and puffing like all the other commentators.
Posted by King Canute, Friday, 21 April 2006 1:21:36 AM
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p.s.
The hard headed, thick skinned spirit of Fred Hollows is a model for non-Aboriginal health proffessionals. What is the problem? What is the solution? What is the shortest line between the two? Then do it by any means necessary, no matter who you upset along the way.

Hollows went around, under or straight through the mainstream health system, which fought back against him, but he kicked their heads anyway. He did not allow his profession's limitations to restrict the spirit of what he was doing.
Posted by King Canute, Friday, 21 April 2006 1:31:23 AM
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Yes, Fred Hollows was hard headed etc. He had power. He was also arrogant and dismissive of those nurses he encounterred in remote areas. Their views and experiences were not valued. They did not even deserve respect from Hollows for him to answer their pertinent question of what follow-up was to be done following his tour with an extravagant entourage through remote Aboriginal communities. To him all the nurses needed, as I heard him say, was 'a good f...'. A hero - perhaps.
Posted by jenni, Friday, 21 April 2006 10:17:22 AM
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All have sinned and fall short of the glory of god

Fred's sexism and his adoption of the doctor/nurse hierarchies are indeed serious problems. However these issues, or the personal foibles of Aboriginal people and their supporters should not be allowed to distract from the issues of Aboriginal health and the strategies to achieve it. If we wait for perfect people to evolve before we embark on justice programs we will be waiting till the end of time.

It was personal attacks against Geoff Clarke and Ray Robinson that justified the collapse of ATSIC. The FBI used Martin Luther-King's extra marital affairs to discredit him, not to mention what the "personal attributes police" have done to women like Carmen Lawrence and Cheryll Kernot. This obsession with personalities will always be used by the status quo to cut down threats, especially if there is substance to the personal attacks, as there allways is.

We have to get beyond personalities and look at principalities, systems, structures and strategies. Otherwise good old human weakness will give us all the excuse to accept modern genocide programs as inevitible.
Posted by King Canute, Sunday, 23 April 2006 10:28:30 PM
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