Archive for the 'Health' Category

Guest post by Peter Murphy - Zimbabwe: Despotism or Democracy?

Published
by
Guest Poster
3 months, 1 week ago
in Developing world, Elections, Feminism, Health, Imperialism, International, Politics, Poverty and Women
. 48 Comments

Peter Murphy from the Zimbabwe Information Centre writes:

Opening Remarks

This story of Zimbabwe and its political, economic and social turmoil is really a story about how women are trying to have their human right to a say in their society, about how the people want to help those millions who have HIV, about how the trade unions want to develop a prosperous, peaceful and just society, about how the professional classes want to create a way of governing that is straightforward, fair and works.

It is a story for the whole of Africa, and that is why all of Africa and in particular South Africa, Mozambique, Zambia, Tanzania and Botswana are part of this story.

As I write the people of Zimbabwe are being called out to a one-horse election that they don’t want, because it has already been drowned in blood, violence and cheating.

Between the March 29 presidential and parliamentary elections and today, almost 100 activists from the Movement for Democratic Change have been murdered, often in the most terrible way, over 3,000 have been very badly injured through torture, and now about 100,000 have been internally displaced because their homes and property have been looted or completely destroyed.

Zimbabwe now faces a chaotic regime collapse, with perhaps a minimal role for the international community in the immediate crisis.

Continue reading ‘Guest post by Peter Murphy - Zimbabwe: Despotism or Democracy?’

Dorrigo doctors on strike over bureaucratic delay in registration of an overseas-trained recruit to overloaded rural medical centre

Published
by
tigtog
3 months, 1 week ago
in Authoritarianism, Disasters, Health and Medicine
. 55 Comments

Update July 3rd: the Medical Board has now approved the registration of the recruited doctor. Now they just have to get him sorted with a Medicare provider number and he can start providing care to Dorrigo.
* * * * *
From today the two doctors who service the population of Dorrigo are on strike, and at least one of them has resigned from the local hospital as part of their protest: they will continue to attend life or death emergencies and to provide palliative care for the dying, but anyone else in need of medical attention who can make it down the mountain alive to the hospital in Coffs Harbour will be sent there.

dorrigonp-cedarfalls.jpgTheir reason? After finally successfully recruiting a third doctor to alleviate their horrendous workload and provide better services for the Dorrigo community, their overseas-trained recruit (now an Australian citizen) has not been able to gain approval for his registration as a General Practitioner, without which he cannot come and practise in Dorrigo. This final piece of paper was originally supposed to be issued in April when he passed his Board assessment with flying colours, but there has been bureaucratic delay after delay, based on a (ETA) compulsory and arguably inappropriately rigorous assessment of his English competency when he has been working in hospitals here effectively for the last 6 years.

Dr Herb and his colleague just heard that the approval of the registration application has been further delayed until at least the 2nd of July. Unsure of whether this will merely be delayed again, they have declined to renew the lease on the accommodation they had secured for their recruit and his family, as they have been paying hundreds of dollars a week on an empty house since March while waiting for the paperwork to be sorted out, and are unwilling to keep on doing so with no promise of a timely resolution. Suitable accommodation is difficult to find in Dorrigo, and they now don’t know whether, when their recruit is finally approved for registration to practise, they will be able to secure him appropriate accomodation at that time.

In utter frustration, they have decided to go on strike.

Below is the press release from Dr Horst Herb, which was forwarded to me privately by a third party. (I have contacted Dr Herb to ensure that this is definitely from him and that I have his permission to publish it.)
Continue reading ‘Dorrigo doctors on strike over bureaucratic delay in registration of an overseas-trained recruit to overloaded rural medical centre’

Issues and the 2007 election

Published
by
Mark
3 months, 2 weeks ago
in Climate change, Economics, Education, Environment, Federal Elections, Foreign policy, Health, Industrial Relations, Media, Polls, Sociology, Terrorism and War
. 16 Comments

I’ve often said that the best source for public opinion research around is the Australian Election Study. Some preliminary data has been released [link to pdf] by researchers Ian McAllister and Juliet Clark, presented in graphical form. The purpose of the paper is to enable assessments of changes in public opinion over time, with some of the questions forming a time series going back to 1969. I’ve only had a cursory look at the data, but one thing I wanted to focus on was the data from the 2007 election, particularly as it relates to issue importance and party advantage on particular issues. Basically, this is much better quality data than anything you’d get from Newspoll.

A detailed analysis isn’t possible in the absence of the raw data which would enable regressions and cross-tabs, but there are some interesting patterns in the data that are presented. The first point to make, one that’s made in the current political context ably by Possum Comitatus, is that leadership is much less important to voting intention than is usually claimed in the media. Since there have been long term declines in partisanship and therefore more votes up for grabs in any particular electoral cycle, the whole concept of party “ownership” of issues becomes much more important - hence all the attention focused last year on “economic management”. I’ve previously pointed out that the question in Newspoll on that measure was actually the wrong one - at least insofar as 2007 goes - because Labor polling found that “economic management for working families” was much more important, and it’s there that their advantage lay (as the opposition now knows well, because that’s where all their attack is focused). In this context, it’s also very significant to observe the finding that a majority of voters don’t believe anything the government does has much impact on the economy - what we might term the “globalisation effect” - something very poorly understood by political commentators, I’d suggest.

Last year, industrial relations jumped from 2% of respondents nominating it as the most important economic issue in 2004 to 16% and top position. Labor enjoyed a big advantage over the Coalition - 52 to 32, intriguingly reversing a Coalition lead (when the issue was much less important) in 2004 of 37 to 27. Continue reading ‘Issues and the 2007 election’

Northern Territory Intervention one year on

Published
by
Mark
3 months, 3 weeks ago
in Education, Health, Indigenous, Parenting, Policy, Politics, Poverty and Race
. 29 Comments

Crikey is reporting today that a leaked progress report demonstrates that the Northern Territory Intervention, now just short of a year old, is “a shambles”. It’s worth reading the full story, but it’s also interesting to note that Mal “who will think of the children?” Brough has admitted that the thing was cobbled together in 48 hours, as just about everyone suspected at the time.

When Jenny Macklin announced the composition of the panel who will oversee the review of the Intervention earlier this month, commentary predictably focused on whether those appointed were “critics” or “supporters”, which seems an idiotic yet predictable angle given that the whole point of the thing is to see whether it’s attaining its actual goals, something recognised by Peter Yu who was named as the review’s chair. Most of the coverage of the Intervention has continued to be framed in ideological terms, not least from those who claim that we need to move on from ideology.

Continue reading ‘Northern Territory Intervention one year on’

What’s with the AMA?

Published
by
Mark
3 months, 3 weeks ago
in Government, Health, Indigenous and Politics
. 99 Comments

Interest group politics following a change of government is always interesting. It’s not always quite as simple as rewarding your friends and locking out your enemies (though maybe it was with Paul Keating and John Dawkins), but some repositioning always goes on - for a smart lobby, in advance of the election. That occurred last year with business groups - some were prepared to cut the Howard government loose and go public with concerns about lack of infrastructure investment, population policy, climate change, productivity and federalism. From early 2007, blind Freddy could have seen the defeat of the Howard government coming, even if the national news media couldn’t, and the agenda of groups like the BCA was well articulated to the policy direction of the Labor party, thus guarenteeing influence both before and after the election itself. Even on the touchy issue of IR, it became fairly clear that ideologues such as Peter Hendy aside, most business interests had reasonably happily accommodated themselves to the end of WorkChoices well before November, and in fact that they extracted significant concessions in their favour. Those who really kept their head down when urged to put it above the parapets by the Howard government - such as the AIG - have had their reward in spades under Kevin Rudd.

The Australian Medical Association seems to be an exception to this rule. As Tim Dunlop writes:

The Australian Medical Association (AMA) has obviously decided they don’t like the Rudd Government and seem to be doing everything in their power to criticise, annoy and/or embarrass them. Since before the election, the doctor’s union has made clear that they don’t like the approach the Labor Party takes to health and were, for instance, critical of Labor’s plan to—potentially—shift control of hospitals to the Federal Government.

Since then, they have taken every opportunity to attack the Government’s plans to change the criteria for the health care rebate, and have been particularly upset about moves to allow nurses to increase their role in the provision of general practices services.

The degree of self interest in the positions they’re adopting is a bit too blatant for comfort, I’d have thought. Continue reading ‘What’s with the AMA?’

We’re all binge drinkers now

Published
by
Kim
3 months, 3 weeks ago
in Health and Politics
. 57 Comments

[Via Jason Soon at Catallaxy.] The SMH reports:

DRINKERS who quench their thirst with four or more middies of beer will be defined as binge drinkers under new national guidelines released next month.

The new top limit for safe drinking follows a review by the National Health and Medical Research Council and will apply equally to men and women.

In what one health professional has slammed as a message that “makes no sense at all”, the guidelines will say that more than four standard drinks per day constitutes a binge. A middie of beer is about 1.1 standard drinks and an average glass of wine is 1.5 standard drinks.

“That means that, if a man is sharing a bottle with his wife and takes a slightly larger share, that he’s had a binge,” said Paul Haber, the medical director of Drug Health Services, Addiction Medicine, at Sydney’s Royal Prince Alfred Hospital.

Nation-wide electronic medical records by 2009 2012?

Published
by
Robert Merkel
3 months, 4 weeks ago
in Health, Medicine and Technology
. 28 Comments

Much and all as their antediluvian internet access policy is annoying, if you want to be kept informed about important issues you pretty much have to read the Fin. Today, for instance, there was a report (brief summary here) indicating the difficulties the states and the federal government were having in implementing e-health. Apparently, plans to introduce universal electronic medical records - that is, storing your entire medical history in a centralized electronic database - have been delayed until 2012. 2012? 2009? I wasn’t even aware that a formal plan to introduce such a thing exists, let alone by 2009.

As previously noted here, there are very serious privacy and security concerns about such systems, as well as great potential advantages. If they get it wrong, there’s considerable potential for it to blow up in the government’s face.

So here’s my little question. Before we get to the stage of spending billions - rather than the $150-million odd already spent around the country on such projects - it would be nice if the privacy and security issues were thrashed out. At the very least, it might save a lot of money in redesigns after media pressure forces hasty changes. Are we going to have a public discussion of these issues, or are we going to get another departmental omnibus program that, like the Access Card, is going to be so flawed that the only thing to do once it’s announced to fight is kill it off? Maybe a discussion paper or two to kick things off the discussion, perhaps?

Coast to coast Labor governments

Published
by
Mark
4 months, 1 week ago
in Climate change, Economics, Education, Energy, Government, Health, Media, Policy, Politics and Queensland
. 10 Comments

Glenn Milne must be delighted that Martin Ferguson isn’t a happy camper, as he’s finally able to write a column based on rumblings within Labor rather than play his traditional role as a conduit for Liberal leadership dissent (or smear people as “artists” and therefore “pervs”)… Today’s instalment contains lengthy discussion based on information from “those involved in the FuelWatch saga” including what Ferguson purportedly told “colleagues” - all in order to communicate “the message… from Ferguson”. Curious yet?

Those involved in the FuelWatch saga say that apart from the obvious economic nonsense of the scheme, Ferguson’s overarching concern was that to cede [sic] to such nonsense so early in the term of the Rudd Government would be to see federal Labor inevitably set on the same course as the Carr, Beattie and Bracks administrations.

Whoever’s been bending Milne’s ear also praises Paul Keating to the skies, and this bit is highly reminiscent of former Keating chief of staff Don Russell’s op/ed on Friday:

The message, I’m told, from Ferguson was that there are governments dedicated to “actions” and there are governments dedicated to “outcomes”. And in Ferguson’s judgment federal Labor’s state antecedents were in the former category; lots of largely meaningless activity that captured the 24-hour media cycle, but which ultimately amounted to not much in policy terms.

One might readily conjecture that Paul Keating has been having a word in Ferguson’s shell-like, but however true that is, it does appear plain that there’s something of a campaign being run here - for which Milne (as usual) is only the mouthpiece. So, is there any substance in the calls for substance?

Continue reading ‘Coast to coast Labor governments’

I’m the pops in the Vox Pops!

Published
by
Mark
4 months, 2 weeks ago
in Brisbane, Health, Life and Media
. 25 Comments

Thanks to Iain in comments on another thread for this link. I was in the mall today having a puff on my way home from returning some library books when a Brisbane Times reporter asked me some questions about Campbell Newman’s new plan to have specific “smoking zones” in the CBD. So I have a new media persona - as a “Queen Street mall smoker”! It was the journo’s idea that I should hold up the cigarette for the photo, incidentally.

Healthbook arrives, via Google

Published
by
Robert Merkel
4 months, 2 weeks ago
in Ethics, Government, Health, Levity and Policy
. 25 Comments

One of the more widely praised ideas coming out of the 2020 summit was “Healthbook”, something that was genuinely novel, large in scope, and with real potential to make a difference. As the interim report put it:

Create a “Healthbook” (like Facebook) for Australians to take greater ownership of their health information and electronically share it with people they trust – for example their doctor, nurse or family members. Users could control their health “friends” and their level of access, share data as desired, and ask for real time advice on health issues. By 2020, this might include sharing your own genetic data with your doctor
or family. This would put the individual squarely at the centre of the health system.

Well, lo and behold, Google Health appears in the news, which offers pretty much the kind of services - for American patients - proposed for “Healthbook”. Joshua Gans is impressed.

There are obviously big potential gains from centralized electronic medical records systems like this. As somebody who’s had the odd diagnostic test over the years for the odd ailment, this stuff gets lost - I have no idea where the back X-rays I had done once went. And, on a population-wide level, there’s obviously enormous scope for doing anonymized statistical research on this data. But would I want my medical records on Google Health, or something like it? No way in hell. Continue reading ‘Healthbook arrives, via Google’

Innovation smarts?

Published
by
Kim
4 months, 2 weeks ago
in Culture, Economics, Education, Government, Health, Policy, Queensland, Science and Technology
. 14 Comments

I must confess that I haven’t been following the national innovation debate closely. It does seem to me that there are some in principle incompatibilities between:

(1) Industry policy by another name;
(2) Fostering innovation as a behavioural disposition;
(3) Specific attempts to create either new knowledge or research or create the infrastructure and skills which support these efforts.

The default policy reflex seems to be (1) and (2) is very difficult for governments to do directly. Since a lot of this stuff was pioneered here in the Sunshine Smart State, it’s interesting to see Anna Bligh redirect some of the “big picture” stuff and the industry policy money - signalled by the abolition of the Department of State Development and now by a switch in focus from infrastructure to direct funding for research, scholarships and fellowships. Continue reading ‘Innovation smarts?’

The great medicare levy con

Published
by
Kim
4 months, 2 weeks ago
in Government, Health and Media
. 23 Comments

Numbers and more numbers. Now Access Economic claims that 800 000 people will leave or not take up private health insurance. This research, like the last lot of numbers tossed around, was commissioned by an organisation with a vested interest - in this case the AMA. The Opposition immediately translates this into “longer waiting lists”.

This is all bulldust.

A few points: Continue reading ‘The great medicare levy con’

Guest post by Possum Comitatus: The real Rudd unveiled

Published
by
Administrator
4 months, 3 weeks ago
in Government, Health and Media
. 113 Comments

LP has often been critical of the standard of mainstream political commentary in Australia, arguing that it concentrates too much on day by day horse race piffle framed by a narrow range of possible narrative scripts. We’re pleased to be able to bring you what we think is the best of the independent media coverage of the 2008 budget, a piece by Possum originally published in Crikey and reproduced at his blog - Possum looks beyond the headlines and delves deeper into Rudd’s governing style, and its implications.

Hands up who’s thoroughly sick and tired of reading about how Kevin Rudd is John Howard lite, a bloke that substitutes spin for government activity in those times when he’s not actually doing the big “Me-Too”?

Finally, hopefully, we can all now put that piffle to bed.

Continue reading ‘Guest post by Possum Comitatus: The real Rudd unveiled’

More complacent denigration

Published
by
tigtog
4 months, 4 weeks ago
in Health, Indigenous, Media, Politics, Poverty and Race
. 34 Comments

Last year Paul Norton wrote with some sadness and much asperity “Is David Burchell brain-dead?”

Referring to the particular column which prompted the post, Paul contrasted ex-communist Burchell’s stance with the positions taken by anti-communist Robert Manne thusly:

David Burchell’s column, by contrast, repeatedly trivialises left-liberal positions on those issues and complacently denigrates those who hold such views.

Well, Burchell appears to be at it again, holding up as if it is an entirely new concept that the panoply of social ills afflicting many indigenous communities are more a product of poverty than of racism per se, because many of the same problems afflict the non-indigenous urban poor.

It’s true that some remote Aboriginal communities, caught in a morass of isolation, neglect and joblessness, have sunk to levels of dysfunction unknown to white Australians.

Yet dysfunction is remarkably colour-blind. If, as we did until relatively recently, you put white families, preselected for their turbulent family histories, into welfare ghettoes on the fringes of the main cities, they will struggle to hold their lives together, too. And then, exactly like indigenous families, they will weave narratives of defeat and despair to console them for their marginality.

Unlike Burchell, I’m not a literary academic writing in the area of public policy, and have only a few undergraduate course credits in social studies from the early 80s under my belt, yet I’d be amazed if he could point to one, single, solitary social studies course which did not identify poverty as the primary component of social disadvantage in blackfella communities here in Australia (as well as in communities of colour amongst our immigrant population and in other nations as well). That correlation with poverty, and particularly de facto ghettoised poverty, has never been in contention. The question he studiously avoids is - why is there such a strong correlation in so many countries between socioeconomic class and the melanin content of one’s skin?
Continue reading ‘More complacent denigration’

Medicare levy thresholds and private health insurance

Published
by
Mark
4 months, 4 weeks ago
in Government and Health
. 163 Comments

I’m no expert in health economics, but there’s been a lot of commentary over the years from some who are suggesting that the artificial lifeline given to private insurers and hospitals has done just about zip to “take the pressure off the public hospital system”, while nicely fattening pay packets and profit margins for some. At enormous cost to the public purse.

These comments from the Doctors’ Reform Society seem apposite:

Insurers are angry and say 400,000 people will drop private coverage, but Dr Tim Woodruff says they should not expect the current level of tax support to continue.

“I’m not worried about how much whinging they do. [I am] just pointing out that it is whinging because of self-interest, because they’ve got a vested interest in keeping as much money from the taxpayer rolling into their coffers as possible,” he said.

“They’ve got every reason to complain but it’s not a reason that should deter the Government from doing what they’re doing.”

Continue reading ‘Medicare levy thresholds and private health insurance’