Personal Responsibility and Aboriginal Health

The crucial factor missing in administering health services to Aboriginal people from remote communities is the absence of individual responsibility for their own health and of parents taking responsibility for the health of their children. This is why is there is a health crisis in remote communities.

In remote health centres every consultation is a major event. Here are six examples of how difficult it is to administer to people who do not take responsibility for their health.

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Situation one

A woman approaches the local health centre and asks when her next pap smear is due. She had her last one interstate at a small community near a major town and thinks she had a positive result. According to the National Cervical Screening Program, women are advised to have pap smears every two years, and more frequently after a positive result. She doesn’t know the phone number of this small community or how to spell it or the date or month of her last pap smear. The nurse spends a…