Australia is a vast continent with huge arid areas supporting a sparse rural population. Providing medical services to everyone is a great challenge. The Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS) of Australia has been proudly providing excellent services to isolated communities in remote parts of Australia since 1928. Australian schoolchildren of my era were raised on dramatic stories about station-owners in the outback who, when faced with medical conditions or injuries requiring urgent assessment by a doctor, would call the RFDS by pedal-operated radio and be advised on what was necessary. Today, each remote cattle station or small community has not only a radio, but also a standardized medical chest and the advice might be about what medicine from the chest should be given. If a doctor is needed on the spot, he or she can arrive within hours, on a light plane that lands on the station's own airstrip, and retrieve the patient.
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