It’s just 1800 kilometres away from Brisbane. Twenty hours or so by car. But when it comes to the respiratory health of children, Mount Isa may as well be a world away.
Research published in the Medical Journal of Australia found the rates of hospitalisation for acute lower respiratory tract infections in indigenous children in Mount Isa in Queensland’s north-west are among the worst in the world.
A group of medical students, led by Elisabeth Janu from the University of Western Sydney, studied ALRI hospital admissions for children under the age of 15, between January 2007 and the end of 2011, comparing it to population data.
Of the 276 children admitted with illnesses such as pneumonia and bronchiolitis, 162 were under 12 months old. The vast majority of admissions were indigenous. Pneumonia accounted for 164 of those admissions and 77 per cent of those children were indigenous. The rates were similar for the 160 bronchiolitis hospitalisations, where 71 per cent were indigenous.
Lungs continue to grow until a child is about seven or eight years old. Damage to the organ while young means it is “highly plausible” the child will suffer health problems related to their respiratory system during adulthood.
The journal’s editorial notes that while the “extraordinary high attack rates for acute respiratory infections among indigenous children from remote areas of Australia [such as the Northern Territory] are well known…few studies have been conducted outside these areas”.
The research had “important implications”, Anne Chang of the Queensland Children’s Respiratory Centre at Brisbane’s Royal Children’s Hospital and Paul Torzillo, an expert in respiratory medicine at Sydney’s Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, and medical director at the Alice Springs Nganampa Health Council wrote in the Journal’s editorial.
“Clinicians and a competent primary health care service that efficiently links with the hospital system are vital,” they declared.
“We need to get the basics right – high levels of vaccination coverage, systems and training to ensure implementation of standard treatment protocols and early identifications of children at risk of chronic suppuratives lung disease.
“…Changes in social indicators are important, not just for health but for social justice. However, for improving child health in particular, both clinical medicine and population health measures still have a key role.”