5 July 2006
Healthy for Life helping to address Indigenous health inequality
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner Tom Calma said the Commonwealth Government’s Healthy for Life program is a good start in addressing the chronic health status of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
“I have constantly repeated that the health status of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples is a national shame. Indigenous health equality will not happen without deliberate targeted steps – the Healthy for Life program is a good move in this direction,” said Commissioner Calma.
Indigenous health services are set to be boosted in the 26 Healthy for Life sites around Australia, on top of the 27 locations which were announced late last year. The sites will include a variety of primary health care services to help address the high rates heart and circulatory diseases, eye problems, asthma and diabetes prevalent in many remote Indigenous communities.
“Hopefully these centres will tackle well-known diseases and those not so well-known, such as rotavirus gastroenteritis, which is currently affecting between 200-600 very young Aboriginal children in the Northern Territory every year,” Mr Calma said.
“By making new highly-effective oral vaccines freely available to Indigenous children as part of the National Immunisation Schedule of recommended vaccines, it will help to reduce the effects of rotavirus during outbreaks. These are small, low-cost initiatives, but they all contribute to addressing the health inequality.”
In this year’s Social Justice Report, Commissioner Calma has set out a campaign for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health equality within our lifetime, which seeks to build on existing policy frameworks and to learn from current successes and failings.
“Since releasing this framework, my office has worked with a range of organisations from the health, human rights, NGO and reconciliation sectors to advance the campaign for Indigenous health equality. The campaign has gained the formal support of the National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation (NACCHO) and over 130 Aboriginal community controlled health organisations which they represent,” the Commissioner said.
“We plan to launch a broad-based campaign in September which seeks the support of all Australians to do all that we can, as a community, to address Indigenous health inequality.”
For further information on this campaign please see www.humanrights.gov.au/social_justice/sjreport05/
Media contact: Paul Oliver (02) 9284 9880 or 0408 469 347
Last updated 05 July 2006.
