Report slams black health crisis

By Bill Mason

BRISBANE -- The disastrous state of the health of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Queensland has been underlined by a state government "status" report on health matters released on November 24.

The report shows that the black population faces substantially worse life expectancy and mortality rates 2.5 times higher than for all Queenslanders. For those in early middle age, this jumps to five to seven times greater than the rest of the population.

"There has been little improvement in adult mortality over the past 20 years, and this lack of progress is virtually without precedent on a world scale", according to the report. The report recommends that the state give priority to a program to improve housing, as many dwellings have no running water, no electricity and no toilet.

The report says that while there is a widespread public perception that a lot of money has been directed to Aboriginal health, "spending on indigenous people in remote areas in the late 1980s in Queensland was 70% of that spent on non-indigenous health in those areas, even though health of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders in these areas was three times worse than the rest of the population".

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