Australian Indigenous Health Perspectives: A Narrative Essay

This essay delves into the health disparities affecting Indigenous Australians, focusing on a narrative about an Aboriginal individual, Mr. X, who struggles with diabetes. It highlights the socioeconomic and cultural factors contributing to health inequalities, including lack of education, poverty, and discrimination within the healthcare system. The essay examines the challenges Mr. X faces in accessing proper medical care, emphasizing issues like communicable diseases and lack of awareness about available government facilities and rights. The essay also explores the role of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) in ensuring healthcare access, and it underscores the importance of awareness campaigns to improve health outcomes and reduce mortality rates among Indigenous populations. It concludes by advocating for solutions to address language barriers and cultural sensitivities within healthcare to promote equitable access to health services.

Running head: INDIGENOUS HEALTH PERSPECTIVES
INDIGENOUS HEALTH PERSPECTIVES
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Introduction:
The inequalities among the health of Indigenous and non-Indigenous inhabitants remain to be
dominant within Australia. Indigenous population of Australia are the people who have been
descendants of groups who existed in Australia before the British colonisation (Azzopardi et
al., 2018). The health position of Australia’s indigenous people is deprived in contrast to the
other of the Australian population. There is an assessed break of approximately 17 years
among the Indigenous and other populations life expectancy in Australia. This assignment
will focus on a narrative essay on an Australian indigenous person’s health perspective,
issues he faced and facilities he received and the present condition (Moore et al., 2015).
The indigenous people of Australia are deprived of opportunities to stay healthy as
other populations in the country. The economic and social disadvantage they experience lead
them to greater health risk, as the condition they live in does not witness good health (Castro,
Savage & Kaufman, 2015). The narration is about a person, named Mr. X, who belongs to the
aboriginal group of Australia, suffering from diabetes. Communicable disease has become
one the most common diseases that is encounter by the indigenous population of Australia
(Sayers et al., 2017). Between the year of 2012-2013, it was found that around 13% of the
population was suffering from communicable disease. It is due to their environment, style of
living, nutrition they uptake and the physical activities they perform in their daily life.
Education has been seen to play on of the major role in enhancing health issues in the
population.
Mr. X, is at his 40 and suffering from some communicable disease. As he was not so
aware about the issues and disuses, he was avoiding the symptoms and now the diabetes has
become a serious issue in his life. So he decided to visit hospital for the treatment process. He
visits hospital and faces various discrimination and lack of facilities as being an individual
from the aboriginal community. Other reasons due to which he was lacking the health facility

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were education and lack of knowledge about health status and facilities they are provided
with, social and economic status which became important for getting a proper treatment, as
he had no knowledge about the facilities he has been provided with by the government. The
socioeconomic status of these people is also a major reason behind their health issue. Due to
poverty, they end up staying in overcrowded housings and poor hygiene which enhances the
chances of communicable disease spread (Lawson, Woods & McKenna, 2019). The main
reason of the occurrence of the communicable diseases in them was their poor sanitization
and nutrition uptake. They were lacking proper diet and healthy environment (Cerón et al.,
2016). Mr. X was also living a life like the other, poor sanitization, lack of income which was
not helping him lead a healthy and comfortable lifestyle. And as he had less education and
economic value, he was hesitating to visit any health care system which was effecting his
health in a major way. He had no knowledge that government was providing all health
facilities to people like him without any discrimination.
As Mr. X starts interaction with the healthcare facilities, he finds out that government has
provided them with various opportunities to improve their health and living condition. One of
the laws is the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR),
which states the right of each and every individual of Australia to attain proper physical and
mental condition according to article 12 (Saul, 2016). The right also states that each
individual should receive adequate amount of standard living, food, housing and clothing and
the educational right. The article 2 also states that the government will address the
requirement and availability to facilities in proper amount with any kind of discrimination. As
people of the indigenous community lack the proper knowledge about the healthcare
facilities, the death rate in the population is higher than the other population due to lack of
healthcare (Waterworth et al., 2016). The lack of economic status also keeps them deprived
from proper health facility, as medicines and proper treatment sometimes become very costly

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and for a population with not a good economic status it becomes very difficult to receive
proper treatment (Anderson et al., 2016). But changes have been observed in the system, as
people know has started learning about their rights and facilities, which has induced change
in their health behaviour. Mr. X after learning about the facilities become more aware and
confident that he no was not feeling any kind of discrimination and was asking for his rights
and treatment facilities. He came to know that he can use the healthcare facility the way his
health condition requires, earlier they were not allowed proper treatment and hospitalisation,
but now he knows that he can ask for hospitalization focusing on his condition and get all the
medical help available in the hospital without any discrimination. It is important to generate
an awareness campaign for these indigenous people to spread knowledge about their rights
they are available with. It will help reduce the disease and death rate in their population
(Jacklin et al., 2017). the facilities and their needs should be focused and should be provided
to them in order to induce proper living condition. One of the last reason of them lacking
health facility was their language and cultural issue, as the healthsystem had issues with
communication, they were unavailable to address them. This issue should be solved as they
are unable to express and understand their problem (Davy et al., 2016).
In order to conclude it can be stated that the indigenous population of Australia faces
a major issue of discrimination in their health system. And the major reason is their lack of
education and the socioeconomic status. As they lack knowledge about their health facilities,
they become a victim of discrimination in the health care system (Davy et al., 2016). The
government has provided the citizens with proper rights and law to remove his issue and
allow equal asses to the rights like other population in the country. Mr. X experienced a little
difficulty at the beginning of his treatment as he had no knowledge about the facilities he is
provided with, he was suffering only because of the lack of knowledge and economic status
in his life.

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