Time To Remove the Barriers Preventing Indigenous Australians Getting Equal Access To Quality Health Care
AMA Indigenous Health Report Card 2007
AMA President, Dr Mukesh Haikerwal, said today that access barriers to health care are a major contributor to continuing poor health outcomes for Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islanders.
The inequity of access to health care experienced by Indigenous Australians is highlighted in Institutionalised Inequity: Not Just A Matter of Money, the sixth AMA Indigenous Health Report Card, which was launched in Adelaide today at the Nunkuwarrin Yunti Community Controlled Health Service.
Dr Haikerwal said it is shameful that in a prosperous modern society, an Indigenous child born in Australia today can expect to die 17 years before a non-Indigenous child.
"Such is the drastic gap in life expectancy between Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations in this country," Dr Haikerwal said.
"And such is the magnitude of our failure as a nation to properly provide for the health needs of the first Australians.
"What makes the situation worse and more frustrating is that when we do get to provide health programs and services, there are still too many barriers preventing Indigenous patients getting access to the care they so desperately need.
"These barriers are financial, some are geographic, and others are personal and cultural.
"Some are due to institutionalised racism - a systematic, and often unconscious, discrimination by services that results in Indigenous patients receiving lesser treatment.
"There is a great divide between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and non-Indigenous Australians in actually getting into the health system to take advantage of the care and treatment that is supposed to be there equally for all of us.
"Sure, the funding side of the equation is vital, with a minimum of $460 million a year in new money needed just to start to make a difference in Indigenous primary health care.
"But this funding must be accompanied by a social conscience and a genuine commitment to fix the problem.
"Hospital and clinic administrators, GPs, and other health professionals should assess their current level of service to Indigenous patients and remove any barriers that may exist.
"Government must examine ways to link the provision of health services with other social, educational, and infrastructure programs.
"We need a visionary whole-of-Government approach to mend many decades of neglect of Indigenous health.
"There has never been a better time to bring Indigenous health systems and services up to a level that is equal to the health systems and services enjoyed by other Australians.
"We are told that we live in a time of unprecedented prosperity. It is time to share that prosperity with the most disadvantaged in our community," Dr Haikerwal said.
Dr Haikerwal said while the state of Indigenous health remains poor, the Report Card provides examples of how things can be dramatically improved.
The Report Card includes Good News stories of Indigenous health programs around the country, including:
- A Family Home Visiting Program in South Australia for parents and carers of newborn children
- Sharing the True Stories - a Northern Territory project aimed at improving communication between patients and health staff
- The Katherine West Health Board, Northern Territory, a community controlled program that 'pools' Federal and NT Government funding to provide more efficient and culturally appropriate service delivery
- Healthy Heart Cardiac Rehabilitation Program, Wuchopperen Health Service, Cairns, Queensland, which has dramatically lifted Indigenous patient participation in cardiac rehabilitation and treatment programs
Dr Haikerwal said these successful programs should be replicated around the country.
Dr Haikerwal also urged all Australian governments to use this weekend's 40th anniversary of the 1967 Referendum, when more than 90 per cent of Australians voted to end discrimination against the Indigenous population, as a symbolic catalyst to work together to improve the health of Indigenous Australians.
AMA Report Card Series 2007 - Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Health - Insitutionalised Inequity. Not Just a matter of money (released 22 May 2007)