Indigenous Female Mortality
Indigenous women in Australia are now living slightly longer. Celebrating failure down under.
A recent good-news Aboriginal story (we don't get many) reads:
"The Northern Territory's Health Department says recent figures show there has been a significant improvement in the life expectancy of Indigenous women and children.
The news comes on the back of a study published in the Medical Journal of Australia showing a slowing in death rates from chronic diseases in the Territory's Indigenous population.
The department's Steve Guthridge says the life expectancy of an Aboriginal woman has jumped from 65 years in 2000 to 68 in 2003.
He says it coincides with increased access to primary health care over the past decade.
"As part of that women are participating in the care of chronic disease so it's their own participation as well as the improved services for them," Mr Guthridge said." (ABC News Online)
Well. Talk about celebrating failure. Are we supposed to be happy that our women are now only dying fifteen years earlier than the rest of the population?
