Governments and politicians should be investing in community initiatives and addressing the social determinants of crime, and health, instead of focusing on “tough on crime” policies, according to two members of the National Network of Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls, Tabitha Lean and Debbie Kilroy. (more…)
Category: Health
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Health leaders call for University of Melbourne to drop disciplinary action against students
In an open letter, health leaders have urged the University of Melbourne to drop disciplinary action against 21 students involved in activism for Gaza. (more…)
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UNRWA must not be criminalised by the Israeli Parliament
The conflict in Gaza has created both a humanitarian crisis and a public health emergency. Both are still worsening. Yet despite this, Israel is moving to declare UNRWA (United Nations Relief Work Agency) a terrorist organisation. This would massively reduce the ability of UNRWA to deliver (already totally inadequate) food, health care and shelter to the starving people of Gaza. (more…)
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Israel legislatively and militarily seeks to destroy UNRWA
As the Israeli military obliterates Gaza, massacres refugees living in tents in so called “safe zones” and slaughters 39,000 people including at least 16,000 children, its government works to “finish off” UNRWA.
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The time-bomb under every state budget
Australia’s public hospitals cost too much and achieve too little. Soaring costs threaten to drown state finances while abandoning patients. (more…)
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Private hospitals seeking more government subsidies
Instead of churning more taxpayer money through Private Health Insurance funds to private hospitals, the Commonwealth Government should establish a Hospital Benefits Fund (HBF), similar to the Medical Benefits Fund (MBF), with benefits going directly to patients for payments to a hospital of their choice. (more…)
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America’s anti-China psyop programs a 24/7 menace to the Philippines
Major Western news outlets are currently reporting how the Pentagon ran a secret anti-vaccination campaign in order to undermine China’s life-saving COVID vaccination programme in the Philippines – and beyond – from the spring of 2020 to mid-2021. (more…)
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Environment: Pacific politician calls out Australia’s climate duplicity
The temperature is rising and the world is getting increasingly dangerous, even the rich bits. Former Tuvalu PM slams Australia’s climate policies. Rights of and around rivers.
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Rebuilding the NDIS
660 000 Australians are participants in the National Disability Insurance Scheme, and 400 000 work in NDIS-related jobs. Our country needs the NDIS, but it’s expanded too quickly in recent years, as state-based services have withered on the vine. 11% of five- to seven-year-old Australian boys, and 5% of five- to seven-year-old girls, are now NDIS participants. At the current rate of growth, its cost could increase to as much as $100 billion a year by 2032. This is simply unsustainable. The Disability Royal Commission, the recent NDIS Review, and the Parliamentary Joint Standing Committee into the NDIS (of which I’m a proud member), have been clear that the NDIS needs significant reform. (more…)
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Time to change the law
One of my closest friends was recently diagnosed with early stages of dementia. She is 80 years old and believed that the problems she experienced with her memory, were due to normal age-related forgetfulness. She has a science background, and after receiving her diagnosis she started to research the topic in great detail. She read several academic articles on dementia, including the book ‘A Completed Life’ by Dr Rodney Syme which was published posthumously in 2023. The book presents his views on the predicament of people with dementia and his powerful suggestion for further legislative change. The book’s title reflects his life, in which and where all that was possible had been achieved and so was, in a sense, complete. (more…)
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Environment: When will politicians take climate change seriously?
Both the WHO and UN may be starting to take seriously the effects of climate change on health. A global plan to save 1,000 freshwater fish from extinction. Covid reverses life expectancy at birth. (more…)
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“Forever Learning”: the Hoc Mai medical exchange program, 1998-2024
During the 1990’s Associate Professor Phillip Yuile of Sydney University visited Vietnam many times, helping hospitals to establish Radiotherapy there. In 1998 he met with Professor Ton That Bach the Dean of Hanoi Medical University (HMU) who subsequently invited me to visit Hanoi with a view to establishing a connection with postgraduate medical education in Australia, specifically Sydney Medical School, as Vietnam’s links had previously been with France. (more…)
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Attack on Rafah ‘safe zone’ is abhorrent
The Israeli military has repeatedly bombed a designated civilian ‘safe zone’ in Rafah, injuring and mutilating many people and causing a rising number of deaths. Medical response capacity, after many months of targeted attacks on healthcare in Gaza, is severely limited; there is one functioning hospital in Rafah. Injured survivors of the attack may only receive the most rudimentary care, and may suffer greatly – now, and for the rest of their lives. (more…)
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Israel massacres children, which the Western Press says is fine
Israel has not only completely disregarded the orders of the International Court of Justice to cease its assault on Rafah as we expected it to do, but has actually ramped up its ruthlessness as though trying to make a point. There were reportedly more than 60 Israeli airstrikes on the southernmost city in the Gaza strip in the 48 hours after the ICJ ruling, including a horrifying massacre on a displacement camp full of civilians in tents. (more…)
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Did a US funded biotechnology experiment ignite the worst pandemic of modern times?
In a momentous development, the US Government has suspended funding from the biotech company increasingly linked to the origins of the Covid pandemic that slew seven million people. (more…)
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Changing skills language to help save humanity
Words and phrases used to define, classify, and order our world, combine to tell a good story. That story, told often enough, seems normal. But that story can hide, ignore, and distort, reinforcing unhelpful beliefs and stereotypes. This is what’s happening with stories about skills and occupations. (more…)
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Are our policy makers Voltaire’s illegitimate children ?
Aged care and disability services bureaucratic elites seem increasingly to work in ways that are divorced from morality and common sense and removed from the everyday reality experienced by older people and their families. (more…)
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The budget that forgot health
Every element of Australia’s health system is in trouble. But you’d never know it from looking at this year’s budget. (more…)
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Want to save public hospitals? First, stop being stupid
Under-funding is not the main reason for the crisis in Australia’s public hospitals. A far bigger problem is systemic stupidity. (more…)
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Future Gas Strategy is a betrayal of promised Climate and Environmental Policies
Climate scientists reveal data that earth’s heating is accelerating, heat extremes are increasing and 1.5C has been breached faster than forecast. We are failing to treat climate change as the single greatest threat to humanity. (more…)
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Being young is getting worse, but we are not sure why, or what it means
Ill health, perhaps especially mental ill health, is generally seen as a personal issue, requiring diagnosis and treatment. But at the population level, mental health problems have a profound message for our societies and their futures. We need to pay it more heed. (more…)
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Combating Islamophobia and addressing oral health inequities
Promoting culturally sensitive oral health care for elderly Muslim migrants is vital to address disparities in oral health among cultural and linguistic diverse communities in Australia. (more…)
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The food industry can’t be trusted to make the rules
In 1964, the first US Surgeon-General’s report on smoking and health was published. The tobacco industry could veto the proposed members of the committee set up to write it. Today, the idea of giving the tobacco industry power over government processes would cause outrage. Likewise, the idea of big businesses or unions setting tax policy is absurd. (more…)
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The age of eco-anxiety
Back in 1947 the W.H. Auden poem, The Age of Anxiety, was published a year after he renounced his British citizenship for US citizenship. (more…)
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Was the Covid-19 pandemic a ‘relatively mild pandemic’?
Recently, a former Prime Minister (who also once served as Health Minister) was quoted as declaring “the Morrison government’s Covid response as a ‘grotesque overreaction’ to a ‘relatively mild pandemic’”. (more…)
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As we approach the Federal budget, whatever happened to ‘Measuring What Matters’?
With the federal budget just over three weeks away, researcher Chelsea Hunnisett has some pointed questions for the Albanese Government, including: what happened to plans for a wellbeing economy, and where is your commitment to intergenerational investment for health and wellbeing? Hunnisett is a Laureate PhD Candidate and Government Relations Specialist in the Planetary Health Equity Hothouse at The Australian National University. (more…)
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NDIS and Aged Care; from rights first to budget first
When she introduced the first NDIS legislation to the House of Representatives in 2012 Prime Minister Julia Gillard said it was to replace “A system that metes out support rationed by arbitrary budget allocations, not real human needs”. It was a radical break with other forms of welfare assistance because it put the human rights of people with disabilities first and foremost – not the budget. It was not subject to asset or income tests. It was effectively unique. It was intended to meet Australia’s obligations under the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities. (more…)
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Responding to tragedy
Much has already been said and written about the recent tragic stabbings at Bondi Junction. Daily, we are also exposed to stories about the ravages of war, hopefully neither suppressing nor being overwhelmed by them. As a funeral celebrant, I am familiar with, but never complacent about death and suffering – indeed, it is a privilege to stand with those who miss and celebrate the lives of their loved ones. How can we deal with all this death and suffering? (more…)
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A new 60-day prescription policy may halve your visits to the GP and pharmacy
The changes will be particularly helpful for women living with conditions including epilepsy, breast cancer, type 2 diabetes, inflammatory bowel diseases and more. (more…)
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How many more tragedies? Sydney siders in disbelief as they lay flowers
Our society is failing the seriously mentally ill. (more…)