Posts tagged as:

indigenous health

Some of you may be interested in reading a GP position description for an Aboriginal Health Service. This job is split between Amoonguna (15kms from Alice Springs) and Central Australian Aboriginal Congress health service in Alice Springs.

Congress has expanded recently and now looks after nine branches within a 100km radius of Alice Springs. Some of these used to have their own health service but was taken over by Congress as the poorly planned and/or executed shire mergers took place with the shires deciding they were not in the business of providing health care to their remote Indigenous populations.

Download (PDF, 113.87KB)

I have this file on my server. The original can be found here (PDF).

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Indigenous Sexual Health

by Robbo on 29/10/2009

Most of us involved in Indigenous Health can quote the health statistics by heart. They have ten times the amount of renal disease, remote indigenous Australians have ten times the number per head of diabetes compared the the remote white population, hospitalised for pneumonia five times more than other Australians. Need I go on?

I will.

A review of the results of sexual health screens performed in 26 central Australian Aboriginal communities between 1994 and 1996 (with an eighty percent participation rate) showed

24–29% of 15–24 year olds were infected, as were about 10% of those aged 40–50 years

That data is now thirteen years old. Hopefully things have improved since then. So lets look at something more recent.

The Western Australian Aboriginal Sexual Health Strategy 2005-2008 reports that in Western Australia gonorrhoea notifications were 182 times more likely to be for Aboriginal youth than from non-Aboriginal youth.

One hundred and eighty two times higher.

Gonorrhoea notifications were 182 times more likely to be reported among Aboriginal youth aged 15 to 19 yrs (age-specific notification rate in 2004 = 5102 per 100,000 population) than among non-Aboriginal youth (age-specific notification rate in 2004 = 28 per 100,000 population) of the same age.

gonorrhoea-indigenous (Click on graph for better view)

What would be the public health response if this occurred in the general population in, say, Melbourne or Sydney. I bet a lot more than the resources given to Aboriginal Health.

That is really just a lead in to the latest newsletter from the Australian Sexual Health and HIV Nurses Association. The first article provides an easily digested overview of Indigenous Health.

On page four there is a terrific article of hands on work during a sexual Health screen with Ngaanyatjarra Health in the Western Desert of Western Australia.

Enjoy the read.

Download (PDF, 1.3MB)

References

  • Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Performance Framework
  • Western Australian Aboriginal Sexual Health Strategy 2005–2008
  • CARPA Reference Manual 4th Edition
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    News

    • Breast screening at overload. Indigenous have lowest participation rates http://bit.ly/43CHRD
    • MJA article suggests more nicotine replacement therapies should be available for indigenous people http://bit.ly/1D6LW9
    • Chlamydia cases increased by 10% last year. STI rates in indigenous also higher than rest of population http://bit.ly/KDqlS
    • HIV infection among Aboriginal people was attributed to injecting drug use in 22 per cent of cases over the past 5yrs. http://bit.ly/1stayc
    • New 12 station renal unit under construction in Alice Springs.Boost capacity by 20% http://bit.ly/HN1Of -will border areas be given access?
    • Smoking is the single biggest factor responsible for the gap between the health of Indigenous and non-Indigenous people http://bit.ly/ezHNP
    • Qld Health spent $22k in accommodation for renal patient as no dialysis unit at home. Unit would cost $40k http://bit.ly/onOAz staff costs?
    • Anwernekenhe National Aboriginal &TI HIV/AIDS Alliance launched. to bring down Indigenous HIV rates http://bit.ly/FRsYm
    • National Indigenous Health Equality Council has first meeting with Snowdon, Minister for Indigenous Health http://bit.ly/pWubU
    • Indigenous pandemic protection ‘a long way off’ for South Australia’s Aboriginal communities http://bit.ly/Z3SOO
    • serious gaps in diagnosis & treatment of people at risk from heart attacks. Good news-Aboriginal people treated better! http://bit.ly/18JO96

    The Indigenous News Updates are sourced from news and other articles from around the country that I have posted on Twitter. Image source: OpenClipArt.org, public domain.

    If you like this post and what else you see on the blog please subscribe by RSS feed (the orange button) or by email. Visit my subscription page.

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    Endemic describes an infection rate of 1-5% and hyperendemic an infection rate of over 5%. Strongyloides infection rates of over 25% have been seen in in some parts of tropical and sub-tropical indigenous Australia. It i also found in high rates in other countries in the same latitudes.

    Strongyloides stercoralis is a parasitic roundworm. These worms are picked up when you come in contact with faeces or faecally contaminated soil. When these worms get on the skin they burrow in.

    The larvae then move through the body and can end up in the lungs.

    You cough, they end up in your mouth.

    You swallow they end up in your gut, well, the small intestine where they can live happily ever after (up to 12 months).

    From there they burrow into the mucosa and lay their eggs. The time taken from burrowing into the skin until the eggs hatch in the intestinal mucosa is about two weeks.

    Some of these larvae when hatched are excreted where they can live for a few days outside the body. Others go through the cycle again to reach the small intestine and reproduce. The video shows where you find them in the small intestine.

    They can be diagnosed from a blood test or an examination of a stool sample. Often it is high eosinophils can indicate their presence leading to further diagnostic tests. You can have them for years without knowing. However should your immune system falter they become a problem. This can be due to among other causes, a bacterial infection or doses of cortisone. Up to 60% of all deaths due to strongyloidiasis are because cortisone type drugs were given to patients with chronic strongyloidiasis.

    Ivermectin is the best treatment with about an 80% cure rate if two treatments are given a week apart.

    More information can be found at the Aboriginal Resource and Development Services website. A very readable pharmacy based article (as part of a larger pdf file) written by pharmacist Lindy Swain can be found in the May 2008 edition of the Rural Pharmacy magazine.

    Disclaimer:The above information is of a general nature only. 341 words where I could have used a thousand. Also, please do not try to take a biopsy of your own small intestine – or anyone else’s!


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