Steele, the discussion was about health care in remote communities, not just doctors, and unless you have taken note of what I previously wrote, you will be none the wiser.
The role of nurses and health workers in communities is totally different to the role they play in cities and large towns.
In a city if you want to get immunised, you go to your GP. If you want antenatal care you go to your GP. If you want your blood sugar, blood pressure or blood oxygen saturation levels checked, you go to your GP. If you have a nasty infection on your leg, you go to your GP. And you do that because apart from a hospital emergency department, that’s the only way you can get those services. And that’s very inefficient because a good nurse can attend to all those things without needing a doctor.
What happens in the bush is that nurses and health workers take care of all these more minor issues, including prescribing antibiotics, which leaves time for the available doctors to focus on more serious issues.
So, when a community of 2200 has two doctors, 10 nurses and 7 health workers, thats a far greater level of health care than is available to people in the rest of the country, apart from the very wealthy. And certainly far more than white people in remote areas who get nothing apart from mobile clinics that visit.

SR,

" .... why don't you give us a single instance where he wrote badly, edited badly, or mishandled the truth .... "

Every 'fact' that Pascoe asserts, SR. Not one is unambiguously true. If you think there is, say, just one, let us see it. If you assert, you must demonstrate, otherwise .... - 'asseritur gratis, negatur gratis'.

Just one instance of actually farming would be a relief from the fraud.

Collections of people for ceremonial purposes, in the hundreds ? Yes, of course, early missionaries reported that often, and had to scramble to find enough rations to feed the sudden crowds. Then they're off, back to their own country.

Joe

An interesting read by the author Rupert Gerritsen see: "Their Ghosts May Be Heard" - http://link.springer.com › article

Dear Big Nana,

You write;

“In a city if you want to get immunised, you go to your GP. If you want antenatal care you go to your GP. If you want your blood sugar, blood pressure or blood oxygen saturation levels checked, you go to your GP. If you have a nasty infection on your leg, you go to your GP. And you do that because apart from a hospital emergency department, that’s the only way you can get those services. And that’s very inefficient because a good nurse can attend to all those things without needing a doctor.”

I'm sorry but this is patently wrong.

I can pop over to my local chemist in my country town and have my blood sugar, blood pressure and O2 levels checked without an appointment right now. They will also administer a range of immunisations.

Here in Victoria we also have remote area nurses as well as nurse practitioners who can prescribe antibiotics and operate x-ray machines among other things.

However it is doctor ratios which most directly impact the health and particularly mortality outcomes in communities, particularly with serious cases.

Wadeye should be staffed by at least 5 of them to be commensurate with ratios that exist across the country. I am surprised you are prepared to accept such blatant under-staffing for that community.

Steele, I don’t know where you are getting your figures from but I suspect that you are confusing medical practitioners with general practitioners. Medical practitioners includes specialists and other allied professionals, not to be confused with your general practitioners.

Here are the official figures from 2015 which shows that Wadeye, with 2 GPs to 2200 people is fairly standard, and the large number of nurses and health workers gives extra health cover.

“While supply of medical practitioners overall was lowest in Remote/Very remote areas, the supply of general practitioners was the highest in Remote/Very remote areas in 2015. The supply of general practitioners in Remote/Very remote areas was 136 FTE per 100,000 population, 24 more than the national rate of 112.”

As for your services by a chemist, they will not do immunisations on babies, which is the biggest demand in communities, nor will they attend to wounds, give antibiotics etc. Your talk of remote area nurses is just repeating what I already wrote. This is supposed to be a comparison between remote area health care and that provided in cities. In a city you need to go to a GP for many of the services provided by nurses in the bush, including suturing wounds, setting broken limbs, delivering babies etc. Which, as I have repeatedly stated , reduces the demand for a GP and leaves them more time for seriously ill patients.

Big Nana, I'm feeling dizzy, aren't you?
Discussions with some people is like riding a merry-go-round.
The only thing, as an observer is to hope the merry-go-round stops soon or the person keeping it in motion, jumps off and moves on.