Skip to: Main Navigation | Main Content
or try the A-Z Library
In partnership with local indigenous people, a treatment group based in Darwin managed to reduce deaths from kidney disese in a Northern Australian indigneous community, until the NT Government intervened.
04 09 2006
A paper in the Medical Journal of Australia is a warning to bureaucrats who want to fix something that ain't broke.
There are islands in Northern Australia where Indigenous people have the highest rates of kidney failure in the world, where adults are six times more likely to die prematurely than non Indigenous Australians. And it's preventable with basic medical care aimed at finding and treating kidney disease, high blood pressure, diabetes and heart disease, using commonplace and fairly cheap medications.
A group based in Darwin in partnership with local people did just that in a highly systematic way and the death and kidney dialysis rates dropped dramatically.
But then a Territory Government initiative took away the programme from the people running it and handed over responsibility to a community group with little experience and who weren't supported when their budget overran. The result was that things fell apart and death and kidney failure rates returned to where they were or worse.
So the good news is that something can be done about Aboriginal health but it's a fragile enterprise which needs professionalism not ideology and inept governments.
Title: Medical Journal of Australia
Author: Hoy W et al Clinical outcomes associated with changes in a chronic disease treatment program in an Australian Aboriginal community.