Indigenous health in Australia - Moves in the right direction

摘要

On July 23, the Australian Government announced the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander Health Plan 2013-2023, its new 10 year plan addressing health inequalities between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. This plan follows on from a Health Performance Framework report published earlier this year, which outlined the health disparities faced by Indigenous Australians in Queensland and news that many Australian states, including Queensland, had reduced funding to Aboriginal community-health programmes. The plan sets out several principles that serve to structure the strategies put forward: notably, health equality and a human rights approach, together with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community control and engagement, partnership, and accountability. A key feature of the plan that informs all these principles is addressing racism that has for many years hampered the access by Indigenous Australians to health care and to public health services. Overall, the plan seeks to make health equality a reality by 2031 by tackling the gap in life expectancy between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, the gap in the mortality rate of children younger than 5 years, the gap in educational access and attainment, and the gap in employment outcomes. The plan recognises that the Australian health system is not accessed equally according to need. Indigenous Australians access health services at 14-times the rate of non-Indigenous Australians and yet their need of health services is estimated to be 2-3-times greater due to poorer health status. Indigenous people also receive fewer procedures and prescriptions than do non-Indigenous people with the same health conditions.