AUSTRALIA WORST IN THE WORLD FOR INDIGENOUS HEALTH

The health of Aborigines lags almost 100 years behind other Australians and they are the sickest indigenous people of all the wealthy nations, a report by the World Health Organisation says. The report into indigenous health worldwide found Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders had significantly worse results than non-indigenous people on every health indicator, resulting in an average life expectancy 17 years below that of white Australians and an average age of death of just 33 for Aboriginal males in some parts of Australia.Some Aborigines still suffer from leprosy, rheumatic heart disease and tuberculosis, which were banished from the white population decades ago, says the report. "On many indicators, indigenous health now remains unacceptably lower and at levels experienced nearly a century ago by our non-indigenous peers," said Dr Lisa Jackson Pulver, co-author of the chapter on Australia and New Zealand.Progress would not be made until the Government publicly acknowledged the role of "stress, alienation, discrimination and lack of control" played in creating poor indigenous health, the authors wrote. The Minister for Health, Tony Abbott, said the gap was "something which no one can be happy about but if it were easy to tackle it would have been tackled a long time ago." He added "a funding increase was likely in the budget."Labor's spokeswoman on indigenous affairs, Jenny Macklin, said: "We need a bipartisan national commitment to real goals and targets to improve the health and life expectancy of indigenous people. That also means creating jobs, decent education and safe housing."

Source: Compiled by APN from media reports

May 8, 2007