Medical Post #4 Outstations

The Outstation van set up and ready for patients

There are 34 Outstations within a few hours' drive from Maningrida. At various times different attempts have been made to provide these people with a medical service but there hasn't been one for quite some time. About a month ago our nurse Karen set out with this brand new truck. She aims to visit the 17 most accessible in the next few months. In a truck illustrated with the works out local artists and furnished with every useful drug, dressing and piece of equipment Karen could think might be useful, she set off. Karen spent the first few weeks taking hundreds of blood tests, providing hundreds of worming tablets and tubes of scabies treatment, checking dozens of kids' ears and immunising every person she could lay her hands on. I was lucky enough to be the first of our doctors to accompany her. My main role was to chase up blood results she had previously taken, complete health checks, examine patients and make medication adjustments. We didn't see anyone terribly unwell so I was able to just get on with my work and get used to the environment.

We went to two Outstations. At each we were greeted first by the camp dogs.Each had a small open classroom and a teacher worked between the two outstations catering to the children of all ages who live there. There is no phone reception but each usually has a functioning phone booth.

We were accompanied on this occasion by representatives from the philanthropic organisation Orange Sky which provides mobile washing machines to homeless and impoverished people around Australia. They are trying to work out what kind of set up might be useful in our region.

Even with the extra hands the physical workload was not insignificant. Each time we stopped we had to unload several large boxes of supplies and set up the mat and awning. Karen would organise the blood spinner and other bits and pieces ready for patients. And then we waited. people would slowly wander over to check us out, bringing elderly relatives and children to be checked out. Though we had prepared beforehand by reading the files of the patients seen in these locations a month or so ago, we found mostly new patients out there as the population remains quite nomadic, particularly in the dry season and in the pursuit of their ceremonial obligations. In this case a funeral had drawn many people who usually live in different regions.

people yarning outside the clinic

Though I really spent all day with patients I enjoyed the glimpses of outstation life. The litter and poverty evident in town is also evident out in the bush but research shown that Aboriginal people on their own land and eating bush foods tend to be healthier than their urban counterparts. Certainly I saw less obesity. I also found particularly at one outstation, that there was an openness and happiness that we don't always see in town. While we were there a car came though with a delivery. Family on their way from Kakadu to the nearby funeral dropped off their morning hunt of magpie geese and a couple of ducks. This was greeted with great enthusiasm by everyone who got on with cleaning them up and firing up the campfire to roast them. The dogs even got one little duck!

It was a bloody exhausting adventure of a day. Karen worked her (and my!) butt off. From the early morning preparation to the evening unloading and processing the blood tests, grabbing medication to be shipped off urgently with the grocery run next morning and generally tidying up our mess, we were shattered. If took several days for me to write up the 18 patients we saw in between all my other usual obligations. I have to take my hat off to Karen who does two such days every week.

Karen applying scabies treatment to a cranky baby.