No-One's Talking - AMA Calls for National Indigenous Body
AMA Federal President, Dr Kerryn Phelps has launched a campaign for a national co-ordinating body to "untangle the wires" on Aboriginal health and welfare funding.
Touring outback communities in the Northern Territory, Dr Phelps said the health status of Australia's indigenous people remained the worst in the developed world. She said committees, government departments and community groups, both metropolitan and regional, were all working in isolation.
"Doctors and health workers, trying to keep people alive out here, are at their wits' end with the lack of communication among these groups, well-intentioned as they are," Dr Phelps said.
Dr Phelps led a delegation of medical professionals to the remote settlements of Borroloola, Ngukurr, Daly River and Bathurst Island to see first hand the health problems faced through lack of resources.
"In Borroloola, they have one doctor and four nurses covering an area the size of Tasmania. The nurses work up to 60 hours overtime a fortnight, and that's only on acute cases," she said.
"Health education and prevention programs just can't get started because of the workload."
Dr Phelps said a national indigenous office would co-ordinate health, education, employment, housing, social welfare, criminal justice and commercial enterprise into an holistic approach to improve quality of life for indigenous communities and improve communication between relevant government departments.
"It's shocking how under-resourced these communities are. Renal failure is common and there are no dialysis machines within 500 kilometres, cardiac arrests occur often before the age of 40 because of excessive smoking and diabetes, teenagers turn to petrol sniffing, alcohol and drug abuse, and women are the victims of domestic violence," she said.
Dr Phelps said the AMA Taskforce on Indigenous Health has set priorities to develop a preventable chronic diseases strategy, establish indigenous medical interpreter services and an indigenous youth health advocacy program, as well as to devise a needs-based funding formula for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health.