Health equity gap now $4.4 billion

Delegates at the Lowitja Institute’s Fourth International Indigenous Health and Wellbeing Conference in Adelaide have warned that Australia’s health services could face law suits over racism and poor services.

In an opening speech to the conference, Donnella Mills, the chair of the National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation, said there was still a huge health funding equity gap of $4.4 billion for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

“If we don’t receive that allocation, we will not be able to close the gap, we’ll be just playing around the edges,” she told Croakey.org.

Ms Mills highlighted a recent case of alleged racial discrimination filed in Queensland.

“We will see a push to the courts if things don’t change. “The law will be used more and more in order to find and seek justice,” she warned.

The culture of some health services was “inherently poor around the ability to treat, or even wanting to treat our mob”, Dr Mark Wenitong, a Kabi Kabi man with clinical and policy experience in Indigenous health, said.

Over 1300 people have attended the conference, with speakers from across the world.