Posts Tagged ‘health’
Saturday, May 15th, 2010
Mark Metherell; 13/5/10
In contrast to the crackdown on cigarettes, the Rudd government has rejected its own experts’ recommendations to take on the powerful food and alcohol industries. Obesity was recently found to trigger more diseases in Australia than tobacco, but the government has given the thumbs-down to the call from its preventative health taskforce for a ban on junk-food advertising before 9pm. It has also refused the taskforce recommendation to phase-out alcohol advertising during live sport broadcasts, in a detailed response to the taskforce recommendations released with Tuesday’s budget.
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Tags: Asutralia, Drugs, health
Posted in Australia, Drugs, Health & Children | No Comments »
Thursday, May 13th, 2010
Sarah Elks; 13/5/10
Ipswitch City Council has rejected James Hardie’s claims that the council is liable to pay compensation to former employees suffering from deadly illnesses caused by the company’s asbestos products. The Australian revealed in September that Amaca Pty Ltd – also known as James Hardie & Coy Pty Ltd – had sued the council to recoup $195,000 the company was forced to pay a former council worker now suffering from asbestosis. In its defence, filed in the District Court of Queensland last week, the Ipswich City Council claims it provided a “safe place of work” for carpenter Anthony Harry Cannon, who briefly worked for the council in 1976. The council claims it provided Mr Cannon with masks and respiratory protection and did not allow him to “engage in dusty work without ascertaining the nature of that dust and the dangers”.
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Tags: Australia, health, Human Rights, Trade
Posted in Aid / Trade, Australia, Health & Children, Human Rights | No Comments »
Tuesday, May 11th, 2010
Adam Cresswell; 11/5/10
Dialysis services for kidney patients in Central Australia are to be scrutinised in a joint governmental review following a barrage of criticism over indigenous patients being turned away from Alice Springs. The review, to be conducted by the commonwealth in conjunction with the governments of the Northern Territory, South Australia and Western Australia, will seek to work out ways to avoid making patients travel thousands of kilometres away from their homes to receive kidney treatment. The study was imperative, said the federal Minister for Indigenous, Rural and Regional Health, Warren Snowdon. The current poor co-ordination of services caused a scandal in February when it emerged that a senior indigenous community leader from Ernabella, in the north of South Australia, had been told she would have to travel to Adelaide for dialysis treatment, despite Alice Springs being much closer.
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Tags: Aboriginal, Australia, health, Human Rights
Posted in Aboriginal, Australia, Health & Children, Human Rights | No Comments »
Sunday, May 9th, 2010
Yuko Narushima; 9/5/10
When Kerry Arabena was told the Royal Flying Doctor Service could not attend to a young boy whose finger had been severed, she was furious. ”That boy was going to be a concert pianist,” she said before slamming down the phone. Reflecting on what sparked her passion for indigenous justice this week, the public health specialist came back to that moment. ”That was a pivotal point,” the 42-year-old says. ”I realised that I could be incensed with rage about how systems could deny people entry, or make economic decisions about what their value was.”
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Tags: Aboriginal, Australia, health, Human Rights
Posted in Aboriginal, Australia, Health & Children, Human Rights, Racism | No Comments »
Saturday, May 8th, 2010
Susan Mushart; 8/5/10
Whenever my mother did something particularly reprehensible – donating our Halloween candy to Biafra, forcing us to wear her abortive craft projects (this was before the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child added that clause on hand-crotcheting) – she’d always offer the same excuse. “OK, so it didn’t work out,” she’d sniff as she contemplated the humanitarian disaster in dental hygiene, or aesthetically motivated schoolyard violence, she’d inadvertently set in motion. “But I meant well.” Even today the words set my teeth on edge. These early childhood traumas may explain why I sometimes have extreme reactions (mainly excessive thirst, I’ve noticed) to workplace signage.
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Tags: Australia, health
Posted in Australia, Health & Children | No Comments »
Saturday, May 8th, 2010
8/5/10; http://www.theage.com.au/world/cholera-emergency-20100507-ujt5.html
Papua New Guinea authorities have declared a public health emergency in response to the prolonged cholera outbreak in the capital Port Moresby after five more people died. There are fears the outbreak could become a major epidemic. Health Minister Sasa Zibe said yesterday the declaration gave health authorities greater powers to contain the outbreak. The government can shut down food and drink stalls and prevent people moving to and from infected areas, he said. Up to 100 deaths have been blamed on the outbreak.
Tags: health, PNG
Posted in Health & Children, PNG / West Papua | No Comments »
Friday, May 7th, 2010
Nicolas Rothwell; 7/5/10 (2 Items)
Just off the marshy coastline of the Northern Territory there lies a magic island, unknown to most Australians, where spirits walk, spells and incantations course through the humid air, and rival bands of traditional doctors wage a constant struggle for supremacy. Elcho Island – better known these days by the name of its main settlement, Galiwinku – is home to almost 3000 Aboriginal people, members of the hyper-cerebral Yolngu group of clans. It is a place of lush natural beauty: the curving beaches are surrounded by deep-red cliffs; the forests of acacia and stringybark stretch away.
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Tags: Aboriginal, Australia, Culture, health, Hindu, Spirituality
Posted in Aboriginal, Australia, Health & Children, Human Rights, Religion | No Comments »
Thursday, May 6th, 2010
Brendan Trembath; 6/5/10
The Federal Government has announced it will invest at least $16 million to improve the health of Australian men. The plan was developed with help not only from health professionals but also from ordinary Australian men. The Government says a large proportion of the new money will help fund a two-decade-long study into how to improve the length and quality of men’s lives. Australian men have a high life expectancy – among the highest in the world – but the Government is aiming higher.
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Tags: Australia, Gender rights, health
Posted in Australia, Gender & Marriage, Human Rights | No Comments »
Tuesday, May 4th, 2010
Mark Davison; 4/5/10
Legal threats over plain cigarette packaging have no basis in law. My late father, a Presbyterian minister, joked that on occasions he would write sermons with the following note to himself: ”Shout here, the argument is weak.” The tobacco industry is shouting very loudly about the Australian government’s proposals for plain packaging of cigarettes. The industry claims the proposed legislation would be illegal and it would be entitled to massive financial compensation if such laws were passed. In line with my father’s approach, it needs to shout much, much louder because its legal arguments are anaemically weak.
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Tags: Australia, Drugs, health, Trade
Posted in Aid / Trade, Australia, Drugs | No Comments »
Monday, May 3rd, 2010
Rob Stein; 3/5/10
An American doctors organisation has quietly decided to revoke the certification of any member who participates in executing a prisoner by lethal injection. The mandate from the American Board of Anesthesiologists reflects its leaders’ belief that ”we are healers, not executioners”, the board secretary, Mark Rockoff, said. Although the American Medical Association has long opposed doctor involvement, the anaesthetists’ group is the first to say it will harshly penalise a healthcare worker for abetting lethal injections. About half of the 35 states performing executions, including Virginia and North Carolina, require a doctor to be present at all executions. Other states have also recruited doctors, including anaesthetists, to play a role in executions involving lethal injections. In some jurisdictions, anaesthetists consult prison officials on dosages.
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Tags: Capital Punishment, health, USA
Posted in Capital Punishment, Health & Children, USA | No Comments »
Thursday, April 29th, 2010
Sid Maher; 29/4/10
Cigarettes will be sold in plain packages from January 2012 as Kevin Rudd introduces the world’s most draconian anti-smoking laws, in a move likely to spark a legal challenge from multinational tobacco companies. The move, said to be a world first, is expected to be accompanied by a hike in the tobacco tax in the budget, as the Rudd government moves to drive down smoking rates to 10 per cent of the population within the next eight years. Part of the increased excise could be used to offset some of the $5.4 billion in incentives the Prime Minister handed to premiers as part of the health reform package agreed to this month by every state except Western Australia. The new laws will prohibit the use of tobacco industry logos, colours, brand imagery or promotional text on all packaging of tobacco products.
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Tags: Australia, Drugs, health, Trade
Posted in Aid / Trade, Australia, Drugs, Health & Children | No Comments »
Saturday, April 24th, 2010
Nick O’Malley; 24/4/10
The parliamentary interrogation began badly for the tobacco executive. After the briefest of greetings, the first question was asked: ”I’d just like to read you something,” he said. ”It’s a quote. ‘We don’t smoke this shit, we just sell it. We reserve the right to smoke for the young, the poor, the black and the stupid.’ That’s a quote attributed to a tobacco company executive. Was that a quote from one of your company executives?” The question was put last month. The executive in the hot seat was Graeme Amey, the head of the New Zealand arm of British American Tobacco Australia. Of course, he had never said any such thing. The line is commonly attributed to an actor in a commercial for Winston cigarettes, recounting what he was told by an R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company executive on set in the 1980s. Still, the question set the tone for the whole bruising parliamentary hearing in New Zealand, one which may soon be replayed in Canberra.
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Tags: Australia, Drugs, health, Trade
Posted in Aid / Trade, Australia, Drugs, Health & Children | No Comments »
Friday, April 23rd, 2010
Kate Benson; 23/4/10
Aborigines living in Sydney are just as likely to die from cancer as those in remote areas of NSW, shattering the belief that a lack of services is responsible for late diagnoses and limited treatment. New figures released by the Cancer Council NSW show that Aboriginal men in metropolitan areas are three times more likely to die from oesophageal cancer than white men, and indigenous women are three times as likely to die from kidney and cervical cancer, even though they may live close to hospitals and medical centres. The study also found that indigenous men were 50 per cent more likely than white men to die from lung cancer and 1½ times more likely to die from stomach cancer. Women were twice as likely to die from lung cancer. Experts have blamed the high death rates on a lack of transport, cost of care and some indigenous people not wanting to leave their families for long periods to seek treatment.
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Tags: Aboriginal, Australia, health
Posted in Aboriginal, Australia, Health & Children, Human Rights | No Comments »
Saturday, April 17th, 2010
Robert Wells; 17/4/10
Kevin Rudd has made his final offer to the states on his health reform package. What remains between now and the April 19 Council of Australian Governments meeting is a final funding offer from the Prime Minister. The commonwealth-state divide boils down to money, perhaps a mere billion dollars or so. Victorian Premier John Brumby’s claim that the states should retain the 30 per cent of GST revenue Rudd proposes to withhold from them seems to be regarded even by his peers as out there. A small matter of principle crept in from the premiers’ Monday night teleconference: that all the hospital funding should be pooled, presumably to be distributed by some independent authority. It’s a silly idea that has been floating around for years and has been vehemently discredited by the states previously. The likely outcome is an agreement broadly in line with the commonwealth’s various policy statements.
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Tags: Australia, health, Human Rights
Posted in Australia, Health & Children, Human Rights | No Comments »
Saturday, April 17th, 2010
Lynnette Hoffman; 17/4/10
Five nights a week, from 7pm to the wee hours of the morning, an all local, all-indigenous team employed by the Tangentyere Council patrols the town camps and remote communities around Alice Springs. They’re on the lookout for potentially stressful situations where they can be of assistance. For instance, they may defuse a brewing argument or transport an intoxicated person to a safe house or a sobering shelter.Team members are trained in a variety of skills including early intervention for drug and alcohol, suicide prevention, first aid and security, with an emphasis on dealing with difficult people and situations, says Marg Reilly, manager of Tangentyere Council’s social services department.It’s a simple concept and it works well; the Tangentyere Council Night Patrol is in its 20th year of operation. In fact, it has been credited by the federal government with improving safety and reducing reliance on police patrols, and cited by experts as an effective means of reducing problems associated with alcohol and substance abuse.
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Tags: Aboriginal, Australia, Drugs, health
Posted in Aboriginal, Australia, Drugs, Health & Children, Human Rights | 1 Comment »
Saturday, April 17th, 2010
Ernest Hunter; 17/4/10
My father died in the locked ward of a psychiatric hospital, in circumstances that were probably worse than would have been expected in the jails of the day. I’m inherently suspicious of systems of coercive institutional so-called care – but their need has not disappeared. In the 40 years since, the “bins” have gone and much has happened to improve the ways in which institutional systems of care meet the needs of Australians experiencing mental illness. That said, there is still a long way to go and, predictably, those for whom that journey will be longest are those most disadvantaged in our society.
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Tags: Aboriginal, Australia, health
Posted in Aboriginal, Australia, Health & Children, Human Rights | No Comments »
