Women living in very remote areas of Australia are likely to die 19 years earlier than those living in major cities, a new report from the Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS) has revealed.
The report, titled Best for The Bush, has put a spotlight on the urgent health crisis facing rural and remote parts of Australia, where limited access to primary health services is leading to poorer health outcomes.
The analysis by RFDS found nearly 45,000 people have no access to primary healthcare services, while nearly 58,000 people have no access to a local GP and 208,000 people have no access to local nurse-led clinics. Dental and mental health services are even less accessible. The RFDS considers reasonable access to healthcare services to be within a 60-minute drive.
Mortality rates are also 1.5 times as high for women living in rural and remote Australia than those living in major cities.
“All Australians should expect reasonable access to primary healthcare services no matter where they live,” Frank Quinlan, Executive Director of the RFDS said. “For Australians living in rural, remote and regional Australia, access to simple services such as a nurse-led clinic, a GP, a dentist or a specialist is much, much harder.”
The report also looked at emergency aeromedical retrieval data from the RFDS, and found the most common reason for retrieval is heart disease, which in many cases can be prevented through effective primary healthcare.
Also, those in rural and remote areas are 2.5 times more likely than those from cities to be hospitalised for a health reason that is considered potentially preventable.
The life expectancy of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in remote and very remote areas is around 14 years less than non-Indigenous Australians.
Rates of kidney disease, infectious diseases, injury and coronary heart disease are all more than twice as high in remote and very remote areas, while the rate of diabetes is 3.8 times higher in very remote areas, and it is the second leading cause of death (compared to the 7th in major cities).
Mental health is also a significant issue, with suicide rates in very remote areas being 2.3 times higher.
“As we look to reform Medicare access across the country, we need to deploy creative models of integrated, multi-disciplinary team based primary care for people living outside the reach of mainstream services, who mainly rely on services outside the Medicare system,” Quinlan said.
“As this report recognises, rural and remote communities need rural and remote solutions that are designed with local communities to respond to need.”