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Aboriginal health 'litany of shame'

BY Danielle Cronin

25 June 2008 - Indigenous Australians' health was a ''litany of shame'', former health minister Neal Blewett said yesterday.

The Hawke government frontbencher delivered the main address during the launch of Australia's Health 2008.

The two-yearly report was disturbing reading, according to Dr Blewett, who was health minister when the newly formed Australian Institute of Health and Welfare produced its first report on the country's health in 1988.

Dr Blewett highlighted a ''litany of shame'' found in statistics on the health of indigenous Australians.
Indigenous Australians were more likely to suffer heart attacks and develop some types of cancer such as lung, liver or pancreatic than other Australians.

Smoking and obesity was also more common among indigenous Australians, who died about 17 years earlier than their non-indigenous counterparts.

''We should be grateful to the institute for once again bringing to our attention in so powerful and uncompromising a fashion the greatest failure of the Australian health system,'' Dr Blewett said.

Institute deputy director Julie Roediger said it was important to focus on something that was a problem 20 years ago and was still a problem now.

Nyungar man Ted Wilkes a professorial fellow in Aboriginal health at Curtin University said there were still ''major gaps'' in the health system. ''I am an Aboriginal person. I do have certain concerns about what's going on in Australia,'' Associate Professor Wilkes said.

''Smoking, for instance, is a major concern for us.

''We don't know why well, we think we do that Aboriginal people didn't take up what other Australians took up to diminish their smoking when all of the smoking information became available.

''You might ask why. I can tell you that the lifestyle of Aboriginal people at this time doesn't allow us to give away those things which we enjoy and some of us enjoy having a smoke, obviously.

''We have a major problem with alcohol in certain cases. Whilst we don't overall drink as much as non-boriginal people per capita, we have a tendency to binge drink.''

National Rural Health Alliance chairman Professor John Wakerman called for a greater effort to improve the health of indigenous Australians and people living outside capital cities.

''I don't want to paint too grim a picture,'' he said.

''There are also many positive examples of effective health services in the bush and of thriving towns and communities.

''But this latest publication from the [Australian Institute of Health and Welfare] provides clear evidence of the substantial returns that will accrue if government elects to invest further in health services, infrastructure planning and social inclusion in remote and indigenous communities.''

Source: The Canberra Times

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