Racism leads to Aborigines' shorter lives: report

SYDNEY (Reuters) - Institutionalized racism against Australia's Aborigines resulted in poorer health treatment and a life expectancy 17 years less than white Australians, the nation's doctors said in their annual indigenous health report.

While improvements in aboriginal health were being achieved, financial, geographic and cultural barriers prevented many Aborigines from accessing proper health care, said the doctors' Australian Medical Association (AMA).

"Some (barriers) are due to Institutionalized racism -- a systematic and often unconscious, discrimination by services that results in indigenous patients receiving lesser treatment," AMA president Dr Mukesh Haikerwal said on Tuesday.

Australia's 460,000 Aborigines make up two percent of the 20 million population. They have consistently been the nation's most disadvantaged group, with far higher rates of unemployment, alcohol and drug abuse, and domestic violence.

Aboriginal male life expectancy was 59.4 years, compared with 77 years for all males. For indigenous women, life expectancy is 64.8 years compared with 82.4 years for other Australian women.

Haikerwal said there was a great divide between health care services to black and white Australia and while more funding was needed for aboriginal health, he called on the medical profession to have a "social conscience" and offer equality in health care.

"Hospital and clinic administrators, GPs (general practice doctors) and other health professionals should assess their current level of service to indigenous patients and remove any barriers that may exist," he said in a statement.

Haikerwal said it was shameful that in a prosperous modern society an aboriginal child born in Australia can expect to die 17 years before a non-indigenous child.

"Such is the magnitude of our failure as a nation to properly provide for the health needs of the first Australians," he said.

"We are told that we live in a time of unprecedented prosperity. It is time to share that prosperity with the most disadvantaged in our community," Haikerwal said.

The AMA report, titled "Institutionalized Inequality. Not just a matter of money", called aboriginal health a "national tragedy and national shame".

The report said Aborigines were three times more likely to have a major coronary attack than other Australians and 1.5 times more likely to die after such an attack.

It called on the government to close the life expectancy gap between black and white Australia to 10 years by 2015 and end the gap within a generation.

Aborigines should design and control health care services in collaboration with mainstream medical services, the report said.

The AMA said a minimum extra A$1.8 billion (US$1.5 billion) over four years was needed to make a difference to aboriginal health, adding this amount was only 1.2 percent of the government's annual health expenditure.

The Australian government's 2007/08 budget in May pledged A$127 million for aboriginal health as part of a A$1.0 billion package to lift education and encourage home ownership and health among indigenous people.

Australian Prime Minister John Howard has indicated he believes Aborigines must focus on "practical" ways to improve opportunities, rather than symbolic debates over land rights and sovereignty based on the situation before European settlers arrived in 1788.

($1=A$1.22)