If COVID-19 spreads through remote indigenous communities it will cause “absolute devastation, without a doubt,” a leading Aboriginal health official warned.
Pat Turner, CEO of the National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation (NACCHO), said indigenous communities need “resources, equipment and guidelines out on the ground yesterday.”
“We had today a passenger cruise ship dock in Broome,” Turner told ABC TV’s The Drum in mid-March. “The health department of WA didn’t even know about that ship docking. No screening, no nothing. In the highly vulnerable remote communities we want everyone screened and we don’t want people taking the virus into our communities.”
The host of ABC radio’s Coronacast and the Health Report, Dr Norman Swan, said that due to their relatively poor general health, “What happens to a 65-70-year-old in a non-Aboriginal community happens to a 45-year-old in an Aboriginal community. And many of them will not be near an ICU.”
The Northern Territory government acknowledged that the risk to remote Aboriginal people is “severe” and made worse by “overcrowding in housing, poor hygiene and other environmental conditions that can increase disease transmission and raise attack rates”.
NT Health said access to healthcare is often reduced due to a lack of transport and poor communications. On top of that, many ill people may present late.
“Health workers should encourage early presentation of all respiratory illnesses, particularly in vulnerable community members, and isolate all respiratory cases who fit the clinical case criteria and their close contacts,” NT Health recommended.
Health workers should strongly promote flu vaccination to reduce the concurrent burden of COVID-19 and to reduce any potential “confusion regarding diagnosis/causes of outbreaks”.
The federal government later announced almost $60million worth of additional health protection measures for remote communities to “minimise the likelihood of exposure to COVID-19, increase their capacity to evacuate early cases, and enable an effective response if an outbreak occurs.”