Education is one of the biggest pillars to support the social structure of the people. Educational attainment and the health outcomes of a society are interrelated with each other. The study focuses on the difference in the health outcomes of the aboriginal and the Torres islander people and the Australian white people due to lack of education. The aboriginal people were sidelined by the government for a long time, which has resulted in poor empowerment of those people. The aboriginal people besides having geographical adversities to access healthcare, they also choose to avoid modern medicine, as they are completely ignorant of its uses. Proper education will help to breed healthy habits within the people, which will directly improve the health outcome of the entire community. Education is the only way out of superstitions regarding medicine. The study also contains a detailed research on the impact of lack of education in the health outcome of the aboriginal people.
The average life expectancy of the aboriginal male is 69.1 years and the female is 65 years. 34% of the entire aboriginal population is below 15 years and only 4% of the population is above 65 years. The adults face from a number of chronic diseases such as cancer, asthma, AIDS and so on. The primary diseases, which are prevalent amongst the indigenous people, are high blood pressure, diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular diseases and so on. In South Australia, around 32% of the indigenous people have high blood pressure (Mirowsky, 2017). The indigenous Australians even suffer from high rates of STIs and Hepatitis B and C (Justo et al., 2017). The mortality rate of the new born is 2.2 times higher than any other community in Australia (McCalman et al., 2016). The reason for such high mortality rates is lack of neo-natal care and hygiene related diseases.
The government for a long time avoided the indigenous people. In the recent years the government has been trying extensively for the upliftment of the aboriginal populations (Guraya & Barr, 2018). They have taken up various strategies to send medical care to them. Although, sometimes the healthcare officials are unable to reach the patients in due time due to the adverse demographic conditions. Therefore, the indigenous people have to travel long distances and often to the urban areas to access healthcare.
The healthcare system of the Australia provides a high quality service, which has created a high influence on the health outcome of the people. The average life expectancy of the Australian people is 82.50 years, which is much higher compared to the indigenous people (Raman et al., 2017). The non-indigenous people are prone to respiratory diseases like asthma and circulatory diseases such as chronic pulmonary disease. Some other diseases, which are quite prevalent among the non-indigenous population, are diabetes, kidney diseases, cancer and so on (Chan et al., 2017). The overall health outcome of the non-indigenous people is much better than the aboriginals due to the easy accessibility to the healthcare services. The non-indigenous people enjoy a lot of schemes and free health services from the government. The high literacy rate of 95.6% allows them to have a good knowledge about various medical conditions, maintain healthy lifestyle and practice healthy habits. The non-indigenous people have access to three layers of healthcare: primary healthcare, secondary healthcare and Hospitals. They even receive government contributions in terms of public health insurance schemes.
There is huge gap between the health outcomes of the aboriginal and the non-indigenous people due to lack of medical care and widespread ignorance. According to the National Aboriginal and Torres Islander Health Survey, the life expectancy of the indigenous males is 10.6 years lower than non-indigenous people (Kilgour et al., 2016). Even the indigenous life expectancy of the females is 9.5 years less than non-indigenous people. The disparity in the health outcomes of the two groups of people is due to the difference in accessing healthcare system. Lack of education, forms a huge factor in using the cognitive and the non-cognitive skills in accessing the economic resources, which in turn affects the healthy habits and the rate of availing the healthcare systems.
The rate of hospitalisation for diabetes of the indigenous people is 4.3 times higher than the non-indigenous people (Battersby et al., 2018). Even there is a prevalence of high rates of indigenous people having respiratory diseases like asthma. The indigenous people lead a hard life and most of the time they are unable to afford the necessities in life. For this reason they tend to succumb to depression very easily and even have rates of drug abuse amongst them.
Figure: life expectancy difference of the indigenous and the non-indigenous people
The indigenous people have to face many adversities in terms of accessing healthcare and one such adversity is lack of education. Education plays an important role in shaping the lifestyle of a person, by developing the idea of a healthy lifestyle (Gibson et al., 2015). The indigenous people are unable to understand their health requirements according to their lifestyle and their demographic features. Due to lack of health related knowledge, they are unable to communicate their issues to their community members and the local health practitioners. A proper health outcome is only possible when the people will be able to avail proper treatment, follow the instructions properly prescribed by the doctor, take timely medications and understand the importance of timely diagnosis (Zheng et al., 2018).
Healthy habits such as maintaining proper hygiene, eating balanced diet, first aid tips are taught at school to the children. The children continue to use this knowledge in their lives as well which helps in keeping them healthy avoid diseases such as diarrhea and dysentery. On the other hand, when a child misses on education at childhood, he remains uninformed about these healthy habits. In the aboriginal children, diarrhea was often diagnosed with other diseases as well such as septicemia, pneumonia and other serious diseases.
Timely vaccinations have proven to avoid many chronic diseases worldwide. The difference between the rate of immunized indigenous and the non-indigenous children is 8% on a national level (Fairbrother et al., 2016). This fact can be easily altered with proper awareness about the importance of vaccines. The gap between the indigenous and the non-indigenous rate of immunization is due to the lack of education. Only a certain percentage of aboriginal people are completely aware of the importance of vaccinations and how they protect the body from deadly viruses(Choo, 2016). Some people are vaccinated due to the persuasion of the local doctors and some completely refuse to be vaccinated. This scenario rises only due to the lack of education. When people are educated, they understand the reason behind such diseases and try to learn the various interventions required to avoid them (Cho et al., 2015). Most of the aboriginals find vaccinations an attack on their culture and tend to stay away from them due to various rumors and superstitions.
Education is not only for the children. It is important to educate the adult as well to attain to close the gap between the differences in health outcome of the two groups of people. Adults should be educated about the various lifestyle choices, which lead them to have certain diseases at an alarming rate such as, lack of physical activity leads to cardiovascular diseases, obesity and other chronic disease. Education will also help improve their economic conditions, which is also one of the main reasons for the high rates of depression, extensive drug abuse by the indigenous people (Sink et al., 2015). With the help of education, they can choose to create different income sources, which will improve their social standing and well and thus helping them having a good mental health.
Figure: Relation between poor health and education
Conclusion
Education forms an important determinant of the health outcomes of the indigenous and the non-indigenous people. Only 78.7% of the aboriginal population is educated and on the other hand, 95.6% of the non-aboriginal people are educated. This discrepancy in the rate of literacy has an adverse impact on the health outcome of the aboriginal people. Besides the factors of accessibility to proper healthcare, the illiteracy of the people also adds up the decrease in the overall health outcome of the people. Improved healthcare facilities and timely diagnosis and treatment can help in reversing the current situation. Medical knowledge and proper awareness of the various diseases can only help solve this issue. Education is an important factor, which will help resolve their financial issues as well, which will further help to reduce the high rates of depression and drug abuse among the indigenous population. Higher literacy levels are expected to make lifestyle changes and adoption of healthy habits amongst the aboriginal people.
References
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