adzwi
| Name: |
Adam |
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Sydney |
My name's Adam, 18 years old, live in Sydney town.
I'm interested in human rights issues (both here in Australia and abroad) and civil liberties. I'm also concerned with issues relating to gay and lesbian people, and the health and education of Indigenous and refugee youth.
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A while a go I signed Oxfam's Close the Gap pledge and formally showed my support for HREOC's Indigenous Health campaign. These are, i suppose, symbolic gestures more than anything else. But I guess an indication of support from the community is essential in giving the issue some momentum and giving confidence to these worthy organisations.
Australian Indigenous HealthInfoNet (great for stats and overviews)
http://www.healthinfonet.ecu.edu.au/
Rural Health Education Foundation: Indigenous Health subject page (comprehensive case studies of communities in which health initiatives have been successful)
http://www.rhef.com.au/programs/?group_id=5
HREOC's Indigenous Health website
http://www.hreoc.gov.au/Social_Justice/health/index.html
This video is by the Close the Gap alliance of health organisations (the primary body which engages governments to act on Indigenous health) which detail some issues relating to the status of Indigenous health.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXOOmx9eKBI
I've been doing some research on the issue of Indigenous health inequality. I've discovered some striking statistics:
- 17 year life expectancy gap between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians. The life expectancy of Indigenous Australians is 62.4 years - the same as that of the people of Turkmenistan (undoubtedly a low-development nation).
- 75% of Indigenous men and 65% of Indigenous women will die before the age of 65, compared to 26% of men and 16% of women in the non-Indigenous population
- In 1998-00 and 2000-02, babies with an Indigenous mother were twice as likely to have a low birth weight as babies with a non-Indigenous mother
- The rate of Indigenous Australians' hospitalisation for intentional self-harm 2.4x higher for men, and 1.9x higher for women, than the non-Indigenous hospitalisation rate for self-harm. This suggests seriously low confidence and a worrying mental health status.
- Between 1999 and 2004, twice as many Indigenous infants died before their first birthday as non-Indigenous infants
- By practically all indicators, MALE indigenous health is worse than FEMALE indigenous health (usually by a factor of 0.5-0.8)
- AND the Indigenous population is less than 3% of the total Australian population.
I've got to think some more about how I can communicate these statistics in a striking way, so a to educate my community about the state of Indigenous health.
