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Maori warriors with moko (facial tattoos) in New Zealand. Indigenous Australians currently face the same mortality rates suffered by Maoris 20 years ago.
(AP Photo/ NZPA, Wayne Drought) |
Body count: the awful truth
Issue 131 - 14 Jun 2007
By Gideon Polya*
Issue 131, June 14, 2007: Australia was shocked last year by reports of violence and rape of women and children in Central Australia.
Since then, Australian politicians have had to face the task of being seen to be doing something to help lower Indigenous disadvantage while not actually providing the substantial funding required to remedy the situation.
But what is the situation?
It has become a widely known fact that Indigenous Australians have a life expectancy 17 years lower than that of the general population.
And report after report has shown that the fundamental needs of Indigenous Australians, in areas such as health, housing, education, policing and social security, has not been addressed by various governments.
But when you look at it in terms of annual avoidable mortality rates, the results should be enough to shock the nation into action.
Indigenous Australians have an annual mortality rate over 3 times higher than that of non-Indigenous Australians.
Thus they have an annual avoidable mortality rate of 1.7 percent.
This means that there are on average 7803 Aboriginal deaths each year that could have been avoided.
That is equal to almost three World Trade Centre attacks a year.
The annual mortality rate for Aboriginal people is also equal to that of sheep.
So why aren't we listening?
And why hasn't the government injected funding into an area that should be an international disgrace?
PC RACISM
The lack of funding for Indigenous Australia is inescapably racist.
If that seems harsh - after all most white Australians would vigorously and genuinely deny being racist - we should appreciate a subtle but presently widespread variation of traditional racism, namely "politically correct racism" or "PC racism".
PC racism describes the conduct of people who proclaim non-racism and anti-racism but are nevertheless involved in actions that maintain racial inequity or otherwise impose unjustly upon people of other races.
Thus white Australia genuinely professes non-racism but utterly ignores the horrendous human consequences of its (continuing) involvement in US Asian wars since 1950 - 19 million avoidable Asian deaths in total and 2.3 million post-invasion avoidable deaths in the occupied Iraqi and Afghan Territories alone.
PC racist white Australia is treating its Aboriginal and Muslim subjects appallingly while at the same time they are professing their noble love of both.
AVOIDABLE MORTALITY
In 1998 an important paper entitled 'Reducing Indigenous mortality in Australia: lessons from other countries', published in the Medical Journal of Australia, reported that whereas mortality from all causes in New Zealand Maoris and Native North Americans had fallen substantially since the 1970s, "comparable mortality rates for Australian Aboriginals and Torres Straits Islanders in 1990-1994 were at or above the rates observed 20 years ago in Maori or North Americans, being 1.9 times the rate in Maori, 2.4 times the rate in Native Americans, and 3.2 times the rate for all Australians".
Unfortunately, a key 2004 review of Indigenous Australian health in the Australian Indigenous Health Bulletin reiterates the appalling, continuing state of the health of Indigenous Australians.
A demographic parameter that is fundamental in measuring the success or otherwise of social policies is "avoidable mortality" (or, technically, "excess mortality").
Avoidable mortality (excess mortality) is the difference between the actual deaths in a country and the deaths expected for a peaceful, decently-run country with the same demographics.
Some salient mortality statistics from the Indigenous Australian health study are summarized below:
o The average annual mortality rate for Indigenous (Aboriginal) Australians (2001) - 22.3 deaths/1,000 = 2.2%
o Highest annual mortality rate for Indigenous (Aboriginal) Australians (Northern Territory, 2001) - 23.6 deaths/1,000 = 2.4%
o Annual mortality rate for non-Indigenous Australians (2001) - 5.3 deaths/1,000 = 0.5%
o Annual EXCESS MORTALITY (avoidable mortality) rate for Indigenous Australians - 22.3 - 5.3 = 17.0 deaths/1,000 = 1.7%
o Australian Indigenous (Aboriginal) population (2001) - 0.459 million
o Australian non-Indigenous (white) population (2001) - 19 million
o Annual Australian non-Indigenous (white) deaths (2001) - 100,700
o Annual Australian Indigenous deaths (2001) - 10,236
o Annual EXCESS DEATHS (avoidable deaths) of Indigenous Australians (2001) - 7,803
Thus, the "annual excess mortality" of Indigenous Australians is numerically equivalent to over two World Trade Centre atrocities every year.
LIVING IN A WAR ZONE
But the figures are even more shocking when you compare them to countries under military occupation.
How does the "annual excess mortality rate" of Australian Aboriginal people (1.7%) compare with that of other people subject to effective military by Australia or its Anglo-American allies in the post-1950 era?
Here are some post-1950 statistics derived from UN Population Division demographic data on "annual avoidable mortality rate" expressed as "% per year":
o Koreans (Korean War, 1950-1953) - 1.0%
o Papua New Guineans (Australian occupation period 1950-1975) - 1.9%
o Vietnamese (Vietnam War, 1965-1975) - 1.4%
o Laotians (Vietnam War, 1965-1975) - 2.2%
o Cambodians (Vietnam War, 1965-1975) - 1.7%
o Iraqis (Sanctions & Gulf War, 1990-2003) - 0.6%
o Afghans (Afghanistan War, 2001-present) - 1.4%
o Solomon Islands (Australian peacekeeping, 2003-present) - 0.06%
o Iraqis (Iraq War, 2003-present) - 0.7%
These numbers need to be compared with 2003 "annual excess mortality rates" of 0% for Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Israel, US, East Asia (excluding North Korea and Mongolia), Singapore, Brunei, Thailand, Fiji, Sri Lanka, Mauritius, Réunion, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Turkey and many Western European, Eastern European, Latin American and Caribbean countries.
So while Australia as a whole has an "annual excess mortality rate of 0% every year, Aboriginal Australia has a rate of 1.7%
Significantly the 2003 "annual excess mortality rate" (as consistently and conservatively measured for every country in the world from UN data) was also 0% for the Arab countries of Bahrain, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Qatar, Syria, Tunisia and United Arab Emirates with similarly very low values of 0.01% (Oman), 0.02% (Saudi Arabia) and 0.03% (for Jordan and the Occupied Palestinian Territories).
In 2003, the "annual excess mortality rate" was 0.13% (US-threatened Iran), 0.15% (Algeria), 0.22% (Egypt), 0.48% (US-occupied Iraq), 0.52% (Yemen), 0.77% (Sudan) and 1.75% (US-conquered Afghanistan) - as compared to 1.7% for Indigenous Australians.
The "annual avoidable mortality rate" of Indigenous Australians is similar to that of Asian civilians suffering total war at the hands of the US and its allies such as white Australia - it is higher than the huge value for US-occupied Iraq; and it is about the same as the horrendous value for US-occupied Afghanistan.
This means that it is safer to be in US-occupied Iraq than to be an Aboriginal person growing up in Australia.
A SHEEP OR AN ABORIGINAL PERSON?
In November 2005, Meat and Livestock Australia produced quotes on the annual mortality rate of sheep in a paper entitled 'The economic impact of OJD infection on sheep farms'.
It states the current authoritative industry position that the accepted annual mortality rate for Australian sheep flocks is 2-3%.
The annual mortality rate of an Aboriginal person is 2.2% and in the Northern Territory it is 2.4%.
This means that the accepted annual mortality rate for Australian sheep flocks is roughly equivalent to an Aboriginal person but is still above that of a non-Indigenous person.
PC racist white Australia is treating its Aboriginal, Iraqi and Afghan subjects like animals.
Just take into account Australia's love of horses.
With good care (and appropriate diet at the later stages) a pony may be kept alive for the roughly half century life span allotted (on average) to Indigenous Australians by white Australia.
Indeed the oldest known racehorse lived to 42 and the oldest known horse to 62.
Australians clearly value the life of horses over that of Indigenous people.
Each hour, thousands of drivers travel the highway between Geelong and Melbourne and take in the rural scenes in between, including horses quietly grazing.
Imagine the indignant outcry, official responses and remorseless prosecutions that would follow if any of these drivers saw several dead horses in a paddock.
Yet white Australians are still unmoved in practical terms by the plight of Indigenous Australians - and possibly because they do not know.
WHY SUCH APPALLING STATISTICS?
Of course, mortality, avoidable mortality and infant mortality statistics are the end consequence of appalling historical circumstances of invasion: dispossession; mass mortality through disease and violence (the population dropping from as much as about 1 million to 0.1 million in the first century after invasion); the forced removal of as many as 0.1 million children from their mothers; and egregious racism and conditions of extraordinary deprivation that have been sustained up to the present.
The current appalling violence experienced by Indigenous Australians ranges from differential imprisonment and deaths in custody, to high levels of physical injury and the appalling rape of women and children recently exposed last year by Central Australian Prosecutor Dr Nanette Rogers.
INDIGENOUS HEALTH AND ITS CONTRIBUTION TO MORTALITY
A comparison of Indigenous versus non-Indigenous health must be prefaced by consideration of the relative demographics - only 2.6% of the Indigenous population is over 65 (as compared to 12% for the non-Indigenous population) but conversely 14.3% and 40%, respectively, of the Indigenous population are under 5 and under 15, respectively (as compared to 7.2% and 21%, respectively, for the non-Indigenous population) [based on 2001 figures].
Indigenous Australians on average are dying 20 years before their time, this situation has been known for long time and the problems are clearly not being adequately addressed.
There comes a point at which sensible observers must advance the hypothesis that the sustained, de facto indifference by white Australia is actually sustained policy.
According to the Overview of Indigenous Health (2004), Indigenous Australians suffer disproportionately from a variety of health-related circumstances. These differential health outcomes can be most simply summarised by indicating how many times greater the Indigenous outcome is as compared with the non-Indigenous outcome i.e. by the "outcome ratio" of Indigenous outcome to non-Indigenous outcome.
Thus in relation to major causes of male death (in descending order of cause importance), the "Indigenous/non-Indigenous outcome ratio" is 3.2 (cardiovascular disease rate) [i.e. Indigenous Australians are over 3 times as likely as non-Indigenous Australians to die from cardiovascular causes], 3 (physical injury), 1.3 (cancer), 3.9 (respiratory problems) and 7.3 (endocrine problems, mainly diabetes).
Similarly in relation to major causes of female death, the Indigenous/non-Indigenous outcome ratio is 2.8 (cardiovascular disease rate), 1.6 (cancer), 2.9 (physical injury), 11.7 (endocrine problems, mainly diabetes), 3.6 (respiratory problems) and 3 (maternity-related i.e. maternal mortality rate). These disparities are reflected in differential hospitalisation, that of Indigenous Australians being nearly 1.9 times that of non-Indigenous Australians.
Major health deficiencies among Indigenous Australians have been expertly identified.
Thus Aboriginal infant mortality is over 3 times higher than for Australia as a whole.
Hearing problems from ear infections are major problems for Aboriginal people.
Type 2 diabetes (maturity onset diabetes) is a major problem among Indigenous Australians with consequent kidney, cardiovascular and eye problems.
Between 20,000-30,000 Aboriginal children suffer from trachoma (a disease virtually unknown in white Australia) and Indigenous Australians are 10 times more likely to go blind than the rest of the Australian population.
According to Professor Hugh Taylor AC MD, managing director of the Centre for Eye Research in Melbourne: "Aborigines have about 10 times as much diabetes as occurs in white Australia.
"There is a serious problem already with diabetic retinopathy. Glaucoma and AMD (Age-related Macular Degeneration) are not a problem, because most Aboriginals have a life expectancy of 50 years, 20 years less than the rest of the population."
Cardiovascular disease is a major health burden for Indigenous Australians and the major cause of Aboriginal death with hospitalisation from this cause being twice that for non-Indigenous Australians.
The cancer incidence is lower for Indigenous Australians (reflecting lower life expectancy) but the death rate for Aboriginal cancer victims is higher (reflecting poorer circumstances).
Type 2 diabetes is a major problem among Indigenous Australians, with hospitalisation 2 times greater and deaths due to diabetes being 4 times greater than for non-Indigenous Australians. Male suicide deaths are 4 times greater and female suicide deaths 2 times greater than for Non-Indigenous Australians.
Renal disease is a major problem for Indigenous Australians with infections, diabetes, cardiovascular-related problems and analgesic use being important contributors.
The "Indigenous/non-Indigenous outcome ratio" is 7 (death from kidney disease) and 30 (for end-stage renal disease occurrence in remote communities relative to the national incidence).
Violence is a major problem, as dramatized by the horrendous recent reports from Central Australia. In 2001, 25% of Indigenous Australians surveyed reported suffering violence or the threat of violence in the previous year.
The "Indigenous/non-Indigenous outcome ratio" is 1.9 (hospitalization for physical injuries) and 2.8 (injury-related death).
Respiratory disease is a major problem and a major cause of death, especially for the very young and for older Indigenous Australians.
The "Indigenous/non-Indigenous outcome ratio" is 3.7 (hospitalisation for respiratory disease) and 4 (for deaths from respiratory disease).
Crowded circumstances, poor living conditions, social dislocation and reduced sensibility from alcohol abuse contribute to transmission of serious communicable diseases.
In 2002-2003, the "Indigenous/non-Indigenous outcome ratio" was 3 (hepatitis A notification rate), 22 (hepatitis A notifications for under-5 year olds), 7.7 (hepatitis A notification, 5-14 year olds), 4 (hepatitis B notification), 3 (hepatitis C notification), 14.3 (Haemophilus influenzae notification for under 5 year olds), 4.5 (invasive pneumococcal disease, IPD), 1.8 (IPD in under-5 year olds), 4.2 ( IPD in over 50 year olds), 3.5 (meningococcal disease, under-5 year olds), 48 (gonorrhoea), 101 (syphilis) and 8.2 (chlamydia).
Fortunately the incidence of HIV infection is similar in both groups but with the following differences: Indigenous/non-Indigenous outcome ratio 3.5 (infection due to heterosexual contact), 0.5 (i.e. much lower Indigenous Australian infection due to homosexual contact) and about 3 (due to injecting drug use with or without homosexual contact).
Noting that about half of the Indigenous Aboriginal population are under 18 years old, it is important to consider medical problems particularly affecting children.
Mite-produced scabies is present in about 50% of Indigenous children in remote communities and up to 70% of Indigenous children in some communities can have skin infected with Group A streptococcus (GAS).
The Indigenous/non-Indigenous outcome ratio is 2.5 for hospitalisation due to complications due to skin sores.
Hospitalisation due to gastroenteritis can be 10 times greater for Indigenous under-2 year old children than for non-Indigenous children.
Trachoma (bacterial infection of the eye) occurs almost exclusively in Australia in the Indigenous population.
Diabetic retinopathy (a major complication of diabetes) is a mounting problem among Indigenous Australians.
Otitis media (OM, ear infection) is a common Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australian childhood problem.
However the high incidence of OM in Indigenous Australians has serious consequences due to consequent elevated incidence of suppurative OM which can lead to hearing loss. The Indigenous/non-Indigenous outcome ratio is over 2 in relation to children with hearing problems.
Dental decay problems are 3-4 times greater in under-10 year old Indigenous children.
Indigenous Australians have a number of other health issues relative to non-Indigenous Australians such as disability (Indigenous males and females being 2.5 and 2.9 times as likely, respectively, to be disabled), various nutritional issues, obesity (2 times as likely to be obese), smoking (2 times the non-Indigenous smoking incidence) and lower immunisation rates. Indigenous Australians are less likely to drink but Aboriginal drinkers are more likely to drink excessively. Petrol sniffing (leading to brain damage) is a major problem for Indigenous Australians in particular remote areas.
This tragic litany is ultimately a reflection of factors such as crowded housing, lack of potable water, lack of sanitation and deficiencies in education, policing, medical services and other social services.
While the per capita medical funding for Indigenous Australians is greater than for non-Indigenous Australians, it has been estimated that there actually needs to be a doubling of money for Aboriginal health i.e. after taking into account actual huge medical problems, social problems leading to disease, geographical remoteness and lack of access to Medicare rebates and to subsidised pharmaceuticals.
As the recent stories from the Northern Territory have demonstrated, proper policing and security that is available as a matter of course to all white Australians, is simply not provided at the same level for Indigenous Australians in the outback.
Education is crucial but educational services are clearly deficient through lack of requisite funding. Thus the Indigenous/non-Indigenous outcome ratio is 3 (over 15 year olds never having attended school), 0.4 (year 12 completion), 0.5 (tertiary institution attendance) and 0.4 (post-secondary school qualifications)
LACK OF FUNDING AND MEDIA NEGLECT
The bottom-line reality is lack of the requisite government funding demanded by international conventions and consequent appalling morbidity and mortality in the Indigenous Australian community.
Thus the cost of the recommended doubling of annual medical expenditure on Indigenous Australians would be a mere $1.5 billion - as compared to the $9.3 billion per year over 4 years of lavish tax cuts handed out to prosperous Australia in the recent 2006/2007 Federal Budget.
Just as education is vital for improvement in Aboriginal health, so education is vital for white Australian appreciation of the magnitude of the problem.
However, while Australian mainstream media are happy to report horrendous violence and sexual abuse in remote Aboriginal communities, they will simply not report the bottom-line actualities that about 8,000 Indigenous Australian avoidable deaths occur each year.
They fail to report that the "annual death rate" for Indigenous Australians in the Northern Territory (2.4%) is similar to that for sheep in paddocks on Australian sheep farms (2.5%).
They fail to report that the "annual excess death rate" for White Australia is zero (0) but is 1.7% for Indigenous Australians - a figure far worse than that in South Asia and similar to that for the worst case countries in Africa.
WHY AUSTRALIA NEEDS TO TAKE ACTION
Australia is a signatory to some key international conventions that actually demand that it act properly in relation to Indigenous Australian needs.
But after nearly two centuries since the invasion there is still no formal 'treaty'.
Indeed there are still Indigenous Australians alive today in remote areas who encountered white Australian "invaders" for the first time.
The last large massacres of Indigenous Australians occurred only 80 years ago.
It is not a particularly long bow to draw in applying the 1949 Geneva Convention on the treatment of the conquered. The 1949 Geneva Conventions state, in particular:
"Article 55. To the fullest extent of the means available to it, the Occupying Power has the duty of ensuring the food and medical supplies of the population; it should, in particular, bring in the necessary foodstuffs, medical stores and other articles if the resources of the occupied territory are inadequate ..."
"Article 56. To the fullest extent of the means available to it, the Occupying Power has the duty of ensuring and maintaining, with the cooperation of the national and local authorities, the medical and hospital establishments and services, public health and hygiene in the occupied territory, with particular reference to the adoption and application of the prophylactic and preventive measures necessary to combat the spread of contagious diseases and epidemics. Medical personnel of all categories shall be allowed to carry out their duties..."
For those who would regard the Geneva Convention as "inapplicable" to Indigenous Australians, we must turn to even more fundamental international agreements to which Australia is signatory, namely the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights which demands for all citizens all the basic things that so many Indigenous Australians are presently denied by white Australia.
These rights are most simply summarised by that great statement in the American Declaration of Independence by Thomas Jefferson (an enlightened slave owner who generated numerous black and white American descendants): "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."
Since nearly half the Indigenous Australian population is under the age of 18 years (i.e. are children), a particularly relevant international agreement is the 1989 Convention of the Rights of the Child.
White Australia violates most of the articles of this international Convention in relation to Indigenous Australian children, most notably (as documented below in this article) Article 6, which states:
"1. States Parties recognize that every child has the inherent right to life. 2. States Parties shall ensure to the maximum extent possible the survival and development of the Child."
Australians clearly value human life. That's the reason the recent rescue of the two trapped Tasmanian miners riveted the attention of Australia for over 14 days.
However in those 14 days an estimated 300 Indigenous Australians died avoidably around Australia, unnoticed by white Australia.
How can decent, concerned people get through to passive, somnolescent Australia?
Decent people are obliged to inform others about gross abuse of humanity. Silence kills and silence is complicity - we cannot walk by on the other side.
We must inform everyone about the horrendous avoidable mortality of Indigenous Australians.
o Dr Gideon Polya is the author of the recently published book Body Count: Global avoidable mortality since 1950. In the past he has published some 130 works in a 4 decade scientific career, most recently a huge pharmacological reference text Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds (Taylor & Francis, New York & London, 2003). For more information on Global Avoidable Mortality rates, please see http://members.optusnet.com.au/~gpolya/links.html and http://globalavoidablemortality.blogspot.com/
SEE ALSO: The Awful Truth
SEE ALSO: Editorial Opinion
SEE ALSO: Statistics in Perspective
Related Links
http://www.nit.com.au/news/story.aspx?id=11555
http://www.nit.com.au/opinion/story.aspx?id=11551
http://www.nit.com.au/news/story.aspx?id=11553
 
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