CANNING Division of General Practice is making its own inroads into closing the gap in health and life expectancy between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians with a new health network.
Wangen Murduin (Healthy and Strong) Aboriginal Health Information Service is part of the Improving Indigenous Access to Health Care Service, a $12.6 million commitment to improve access to health services over four years.
Canning Division chairman Sri Srigandan said Aboriginal residents traditionally have higher rates of diabetes, hypertension, cholesterol and mental illness than non-Aboriginal residents.
“What we see among Aboriginal patients is more complications from their illnesses,” he said.
About one-third of Perth’s Aboriginal community lives in the Canning district, which includes South Perth, Belmont, Victoria Park, Canning, Gosnells, Armadale and Serpentine-Jarrahdale.
The service will offer its own centre, access to Aboriginal Health Workers and a registrar of participating GPs close to the clients’ home.
He said the program would run between Aboriginal organisations and general practitioners to offer a more culturally appropriate health service.
“In the past, a lot of GPs working with Aboriginal patients haven’t understood the verbal and non-verbal queues their patients are giving,” Dr Srigandan said.
He said that while attempts had been made to address the shortfalls of Aboriginal health service provision in the past, it had been disjointed.
The best part of the new service, he added, was that it offered a network of services all working from the same program.
“In the past the essential elements have been missing,” Dr Srigandan said.
“There have been bits and pieces of the chain lying around in different places. “Now we’ve just linked them all together.
“From the time that Kevin Rudd did the apology a lot of things have just been in words.
“We’re trying to translate that apology into actions as well.”