The Medical journal of Australia
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In the next Australian Health Survey, Indigenous people under 18 years of age will be excluded from direct clinical measurements and laboratory tests. Indigenous people of all ages were to be excluded from the opportunity, offered to other Australians, to donate blood and urine samples to a national repository. This component has now been abandoned for the whole cohort. This sets perilous precedents of exclusion from opportunities available to all other Australians, and deprives the medical community of information that could inform strategies to improve health profiles and outcomes in this seriously disadvantaged group.
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Australia's efforts to prevent, diagnose and treat cancer are not as successful for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as they are for other Australians. There is a need for a nationally coordinated, collaborative, priority-driven research effort to better understand what works, and we need to implement that knowledge. All aspects of the process must involve genuine Indigenous leadership and participation.
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Health is dependent on conditions that enable people to live lives they would choose to live.
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Respect, tolerance and trust in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are needed from government to improve the health and wellbeing of Indigenous Australians.