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We can cut black death rate: expert

By Danielle Cronin

26 March 2003 - The death rate among indigenous Australians could be cut by as much as 30 per cent in 10 years with an adequate level of investment in health services, ANU Professor Ian Ring said yesterday.

Australia had made little or no progress towards improving Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders’ health in the past 10 years which was in stark contrast to gains made in New Zealand, the United States and Canada since the 1970s. “If policies, frameworks and strategies made people healthy, Aboriginal people would be the healthiest people on earth,” Professor Ring said.

“There is no particular mystery about what needs to be done from a health service point of view.”

Professor Ring is the foundation director of Australian Primary Health Care Research Institute.

He joined Democrat Senator Aden Ridgeway at the Australian National University last night(mon) to present a public lecture on improving Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health.

Senator Ridgeway said there was a clear relationship between poor education, high levels of unemployment, poverty, inadequate nutrition and poor health.

“And when you couple these factors with two centuries of dispossession, social exclusion, and racism, it’s no surprise that indigenous Australians have the worst health statistics in this country,” Senator Ridgeway said.

Professor Ring said the programs were in place to improve indigenous health services in five years and reduce the death rates in 10 years.

“Indigenous people are three times sicker but have just one third the use of health services compared to non-indigenous Australians,” Professor Ring said.

“It is clear, for example, that upwards of 50 per cent of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people over 30 years of age already have one of a set of interlocking chronic diseases or their precursors. These conditions are diagnosable and treatable but for many of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population, they remain undiagnosed and treatable.”

Professor Ring said the key to improving the situation was to adequately fund existing schemes for access to primary health care, medical workforce training, community-controlled health organisations and improved infrastructure including water supply, sanitation and other basic services in communities.

Senator Ridgeway said the necessary investment would cost between $250 and $300’million annually.
‘This would not be any kind of special deal, just what would be required for anyone else in the population with the same health as the Aboriginal population,’ he said.

Source:The Canberra Times

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