Opinion & Commentary
Hale and hearty, say their parents
Ninety-seven percent of indigenous children are reported to be in excellent, very good, or good health, according to the federal government’s long-awaited longitudinal study into Aboriginal children’s health, released late last month. Although the report sheds some light on the overall health status of Aboriginal children, its initial findings are based on parents’ opinions and not fact.
The study, which aims to provide much needed data on what makes and keeps Aboriginal children strong and healthy, tracks children from infancy through childhood. But the report, Finding our Feet, is based on interviews with the children’s parents and is as reliable or unreliable as the parents themselves.
What would you say if asked about your child’s health, the food you gave them, and whether they brushed their teeth at night? I doubt many parents would volunteer information that paints them in a bad light. I know I would be reluctant to admit how many packets of chips my daughter eats in a week and how much television she watches. How healthy you think your children are is subjective. Many parents no doubt think their kids are healthy when they are not, while others overemphasise every little ache or pain.
Tess Lea, in her book Bureaucrats and Bleeding Hearts: Indigenous Health in Northern Australia, argues that many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders living in remote communities are so used to being sick they do not know what it is to feel well. On a recent visit to a remote community in East Arnhem Land, I observed children running around, looking very energetic and full of life as most kids do. While some had runny noses and sores on their legs, there were no noticeable signs of anything seriously wrong. However, a nurse in the community told me that although the children looked healthy, quite a few had serious health problems.
Health assessments conducted by medical professionals would have highlighted the difference between how healthy parents think their children are and how healthy they really are. The study did give questionnaires to each child’s teacher or childcare provider to complete, but those results were not in the report. This is a shame because we have missed the opportunity to observe any inconsistencies between the opinions of teachers and parents regarding a child’s health.
To say that 97% of Aboriginal children are in good health without any other evidence is misleading, but the report does suggest that Aboriginal children in general are not as unwell as the official statistics and the media tend to portray.
Because data on Aboriginal children’s health are averages, they lead to generalisations and stereotypes about Aboriginal wellbeing. Many health professionals and communities have so stereotyped the snotty-nosed Aboriginal child that often what is not tolerated in non-indigenous children is viewed as normal for indigenous children. The continual practice of highlighting the gaps between indigenous and non-indigenous health outcomes tends to attribute health inequities as being related to ethnic or racial difference.
This study lends weight to the argument that in general, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children are reasonably healthy, and it is a minority of sick children that skews the statistics.
Participants were selected from a cross-section of communities, but these are mainly in urban and rural areas rather than remote locations or small outstation communities. This is fair enough as it reflects where the greatest concentration of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders live.
Contrary to popular perception, most Aborigines live in cities and regional towns, not in remote communities, where the health status of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders is particularly appalling. Isolated from mainstream Australia, they live in crowded community housing and suffer from some of the highest rates of rheumatic fever and other infectious diseases in the world.
Up to half the children in some remote communities are infected with scabies and intestinal diseases. In some remote inland communities, more than 20% of the children suffer from trachoma, a debilitating eye infection that can lead to permanent blindness if left untreated. Otitis media (middle ear infection) is also three times more common among remote indigenous Australians than non-indigenous Australians.
Indigenous Affairs Minister Jenny Macklin said the results of this study are ‘an important part of the government’s indigenous early childhood package to close the gap of disadvantage’. However, these results should not be taken at face value. There is also a very real danger that in celebrating the positive results of this study, those children most in need of health interventions are forgotten.
Sara Hudson is a Policy Analyst with the Indigenous Affairs Research Program at The Centre for Independent Studies.
