Health is more than medicine

Nura Ward on dialysis in Alice Springs

Residents of inland Australia continue to suffer from health policies that determine their fates by where they live in relation to imaginary lines on maps.

Last year a massive response to the plight of Patrick Tjungurrayi, an elderly artist from a remote community near the border of the Northern Territory and Western Australia, prompted an agreement between the NT and WA governments to allow renal patients more choice in where they were treated.

Patrick Tjungarrayi had declared he would rather die in his own community than have to travel for dialysis to the distant city of Perth, where he had no relatives living.

Now Nura Ward, a grandmother in her seventies from Ernabella in South Australia’s far north-west, is the subject of a similar policy.

She will be required to go to Adelaide for treatment for kidney failure because she lives in South Australia. Like Patrick, she has no friends in the big city and wants to go to Alice Springs for dialysis.

“It was bad enough when people had to go on dialysis and live in Alice Springs , but this  is  much,  much  worse.    We  might  never  see  Nura  again.  She  came  in  to  hospital   and  now  they  want  to  shift  her  to  the  city,  to  Adelaide. that’s a very cruel thing, especially for an old lady,” said Mrs Ward’s niece, Melissa Thompson. “I bet this wouldn’t happen to  Mike  Rann  or  Paul  Henderson  or  Warren  Snowdon’s  mum,  or  aunty,  or  nana.”

A spokesperson for the NPY Women’s Council said Mrs.  Ward,  in  her  seventies,  was  a  former  cattle  station  worker,  a   health  worker  with  her  local   health  service,  Nganampa  Health,  and an  aged  and  disability  advocate.   She  had campaigned  vigorously  against  petrol  sniffing  and  for  the  wide  regional   distribution  of  Opal  low-octane  fuel.    A  ”highly  accomplished  dancer”  and  cultural   interpreter  in  the  traditional  style  of  her  region,  in  the  late  1990s  she  had instructed  the   Sydney-­based  Bangarra  Aboriginal  dance  troupe.

A spokesperson for the NT Health Department provided the following comment:

There continues to be a high demand for renal services in Central Australia. To meet current demand capacity has been increased through extra machines within the Alice Springs hospital and an additional seven day service at Flynn Drive.

Later this year the new Gap Road renal service will commence with a total of 12 additional beds, serving 48 patients

The NT Department of Health and Families are in the final stages of negotiating a tri-state agreement with WA and SA for treatment and support of patients within the broader Central Australian region.