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Aboriginal Health Case Study

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Health outcome for Australia’s general population performs relatively better when compared to its international peers. However, this case scenario is not reflected in its indigenous populations. Most Indigenous communities access poor health services compared to the rest of the global population. For instance, major disparities currently exist in the reported life expectancy between Aboriginal people as well as non-Aborigines within Australia. The Aboriginals as well as Torres Island residents have the lowest life expectancy reported within Australia (Ross, 2006, p. 56.) There has been minimal improvement in the mortality rate over the last decades and is currently about 6 to 8 times higher than that of the overall population (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2006). Aboriginal as well as residents of the Torres Strait Island live approximately twenty years less than Australians from non-Indigenous communities (Ross, 2006, p.56).

A number of factors have been contributing to the comparatively poorer health outcomes of Australian’s Indigenous people, as well as the …show more content…

The current difference in the life expectancy between Indigenous communities and non-Indigenous communities is approximately 7 years in Canada and the USA, 7.5 years within New Zealand and close to 20 years within Australia (SPFII, 2009, p. 112). The infant mortality rate of Aboriginal as well as Torres Strait Islanders is three times higher than that of non-Indigenous populations in Australians. .

Thirteen percent of Indigenous children born inside Australia have a low birth weight two times more than the frequency of baby births with low weight in Indigenous communities in the USA and Canada (Barnes, Adams and Powell-Griner, 2005, p. 78). Lastly, Australia records over 60% higher incidence of low birth weight within Indigenous children born inside New

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