Risk groups
High risk groups are those groups with a higher risk of obtaining infections and vaccine preventable diseases. In Australia, high risk groups include Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, pregnant women, and older Australians. People working in healthcare, nursing homes and childcare facilities also have a high risk of obtaining infectious diseases.[1]
One of the Strategic Priorities in the National Immunisation Strategy is to improve coverage of high risk population groups. Identifying and monitoring specific groups in Australia who have a high risk of acquirring infection and vaccine preventable diseases is important as they require extra protection against diseases. Prevention and immunisation has been shown to be effective for many infectious diseases. [1]
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders
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These high rates of disease were due to lack of exposure and immunity in the early period of European colonisation. Recently, poor standards of living and access to water, housing and health care have contributed to their high rates of obtaining infectious diseases. Universal vaccination programs for VPDs had recently improved Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander child mortality and shown excellent disease control. Other VPDs such as invasive pneumococcal disease and influenza still remain a major cause of death in Indigenous people.[2] Therefore, targeted vaccination programs have shown to decrease health disparities.
Measures are focused on prevention and primary care at a young age as mortality is higher than other Australians. However, there are vaccination gaps in both children and adults. Indigenous children had similar coverage to other children at 2 years, but lower at 12 months. Vaccination coverage for Indigenous adults 50-64 years was higher than non-Indigenous
Not only did sickness kill many people, but the foreigners that came to Australia killed locals. Western Aranda says “when the whites arrived there were 250 languages” along with 450 different dialects there was a total of 700 languages and now there is only 70 languages left. Luckily now there are radios that play the aboriginal’s
Health care policies are put into place regarding childhood immunization requirements for schools, along with information on obtaining religious exemptions. Each state and/or country develops their own individualized guidelines through interactions with federal and state government agencies. One in five babies around the world are missing out on basic vaccines and may die from weak health systems and insufficient funding. UNICEF and its partners are working to change these numbers and ensure that all children are successfully protected with vaccines.
During the Seven Years War, there was a definite outbreak in the amount of Aboriginals who contracted smallpox. It had been a disease that was around since the beginning of the colonization of North America, but there was a larger immigration of troops from Europe to the colonies at this time. (10) This also correlates to more contact between Aboriginal peoples without the immune system to fight off smallpox and Europeans who were immune to the disease. This was in part because every spring an increasingly large amount of soldiers left for Canadian missions where they would be surrounded by prisoners, opponents and allies alike, most of who were European. Many of the Aboriginals lost their lives because they had not become immune to the
Atkinson, William. Epidemiology and Prevention of Vaccine-Preventable Diseases. Washington: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1996.
There are significant health disparities that exist between Indigenous and Non-Indigenous Australians. Being an Indigenous Australian means the person is and identifies as an Indigenous Australian, acknowledges their Indigenous heritage and is accepted as such in the community they live in (Daly, Speedy, & Jackson, 2010). Compared with Non-Indigenous Australians, Aboriginal people die at much younger ages, have more disability and experience a reduced quality of life because of ill health. This difference in health status is why Indigenous Australians health is often described as “Third World health in a First World nation” (Carson, Dunbar, Chenhall, & Bailie, 2007, p.xxi). Aboriginal health care in the present and future should encompass a holistic approach which includes social, emotional, spiritual and cultural wellbeing in order to be culturally suitable to improve Indigenous Health. There are three dimensions of health- physical, social and mental- that all interrelate to determine an individual’s overall health. If one of these dimensions is compromised, it affects how the other two dimensions function, and overall affects an individual’s health status. The social determinants of health are conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work and age which includes education, economics, social gradient, stress, early life, social inclusion, employment, transport, food, and social supports (Gruis, 2014). The social determinants that are specifically negatively impacting on Indigenous Australians health include poverty, social class, racism, education, employment, country/land and housing (Isaacs, 2014). If these social determinants inequalities are remedied, Indigenous Australians will have the same opportunities as Non-Ind...
According to Australian indigenous website, healthinfoNet, in 2010-2012 life expectancy of indigenous people were 69 years which is 11 years less than the 80 years expected for the non- indigenous men and women. Moreover, the life expectancy for native women was 73 years, during 2010-2012, which is 9.5 years less than the expectation of 83 years for non-Indigenous women. The reason for decreased health can be due to deficiencies in water supply, sanitation and lack of proper medical services.
Many of the inequalities in the health of the Aboriginal people can be attributed to the
The great explorations and subsequent migrations of Europeans to the Americas in the 15th-18th centuries opened up those entire continents to the fatal impact of the infectious diseases of Europe. European conquests owed a good deal of their success to the effects of disease on the indigenous peoples, especially smallpox in the Americas. Before Spanish conquest of the New World, there was no sickness or great health related issues that Natives were forced to face. That all changed, however, when European explorers, Spanish conquistadors in particular, unknowingly brought the deadly disease of smallpox into Latin America. A recollection of days before the Spanish by an Indian of the Yucatan from the book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel shows just how disease free natives were before the Spanish arrival: “There was then no sickness; they had no aching bones; they had then no high fever; they had then no smallpox; they had then no burning chest; they had then no abdominal pain; they had then no consumption; they had then no headache. At that time the course of humanity was orderly. The foreigners made it otherwise when they arrived here.” Then, after the Spanish came to the New World and spread smallpox to the natives, over 95% of them were killed. The Taino population of Hispaniola that was once estimated to be as large as 8 million went virtually extinct. Central Mexico’s population went from 15 million in 1519 to 1.5 million a century later. ...
The European colonization of North America changed the indigenous population’s way of life and their culture. They caught illnesses they were not immune too, like chickenpox and measles. They did not have any
0.8% of the overall Federal health expenditure in 2009 which was spent on Aboriginal health. The overall wellbeing of an individual is more than just being free from disease. It is about their social, emotional, spiritual, physiological as well as the physical prosperity. Indigenous health issues are all around us, but we don’t recognise because it doesn’t affect us, but this issue is a concern to Indigenous Australia and also to modern day Catholics in Australia The statistics relating to Indigenous health is inexcusable, life expectancy is at an all time low, higher hospilatisation for avoidable diseases, alerting rates of deaths from diabetes and kidney disease. This issue is bigger than we all think, for example 13% of Indigenous homes
Another risk factor that has an impact on the quality of health care delivered to rural population is the lack of sufficient skilled experienced health care providers in remote and regional area of Australia. Health care professionals working in rural areas have to be well trained in emergency and trauma cases as the health care conditions presented in rural areas are different than those in the cities as a result of increased environmental hazardous and injuries(Veitch, 2009). Most health care professionals are ex...
Director National Immunization Program in a letter to the UK’s Chief Medical Officer 15 February 2002.
The colonisation of Australia occurred throughout 1788-1990. During this time, Great Britain discovered Australia and decided that it would become a new British colony (“Australian History: Colonisation 17-88-1990”, 2014.). It was decided that convicts would be sent to Australia and used for labour to build the new colony. There are many health determinants that are effecting the health of Indigenous Australians including; poor living conditions, risk behaviours and low socioeconomic status. Many of these determinants have an effect on the Indigenous Australians due to the colonisation of Australia.
The CDC works closely with public health agencies and private partners in order to improve and sustain immunization coverage and to monitor the safety of vaccines so that public ...
This, in turn, will deteriorate the prevalence of preventable diseases and hence decrease the likelihood that medically incompatible individuals will contract them (Kim, T. H., Johnstone, J., & Loeb, M., 2011). According to the World Health Organization, “The decline of disease incidence is greater than the proportion of individuals immunized because vaccination reduces the spread of an infectious agent by reducing the amount and duration of pathogen shedding by vaccinees, retarding transmission” (Andre, 2008). This enables a significant percentage of individuals who oppose vaccines to reconcile with those who do not, as this eliminates the concern regarding adverse reactions. According to an article titled “Vaccine herd effect,” herd immunity has pervaded many communities to help minimize the spread of disease. For example, in the 1990s, a vaccine was introduced that targeted a strain of disease known as streptococcus pneumoniae, which can potentially cause pneumonia. The CDC discovered a fifty percent reduction in pneumonia cases among the elderly despite the vaccine being offered primarily to children (Kim, T. H., Johnstone, J., & Loeb, M., 2011). This scenario is indubitably a prime exemplar for herd immunity, and it is the greatest reason that mandatory inoculation is