Aboriginal Health Statistics

I know statistics are largely boring things that fail to take into consideration the human cost of each and every person represented but I thought that it provided quite a bit of insight into where things are at over here.  So I hope you find them slightly enlightening too.

Just over 500,000 people identify themselves as Indigenous in Australia (2.5% of the population), so they are well and truly over-represented in these stats.  The Northern Territory is the least populated of the States with under 220,000 people living here (in over 1,349,129 sq km).  Of that, around 54,000 people are indigenous.

30-50% is the estimated proportion of sexually abused Indigenous children in Australia where the perpetrator was 18 years or younger.

An Indigenous child in 2009 was 7 times more likely to be sexually abused than a non-Aboriginal child.

15% of reported sexual offence incidents in Australia go to court.

The consequences of child sexual abuse are horrifying:

• Children under the age of 10 and as young as 4 are diagnosed with sexually transmitted diseases like gonorrhoea, chlamydia, syphilis and trichomoniasis.
• Children as young as three have been exposed to pornographic material in their homes.
• Teenagers rape children.

Within a six-month period in early 2007 the Northern Territory Health Department reported more than 800 cases of sexually transmitted diseases in Indigenous populations, while just 53 cases were noted in non-Indigenous groups.

http://www.creativespirits.info/aboriginalculture/health/aboriginal-child-sexual-abuse.html#ixzz1wAu7Qamf

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-05-26/am-government-27too-secretive27-on-sexual-abuse-report/4034946?section=sa

The life expectancy of an indigenous male living in the Northern Territory is 61 years, while for a non-indigenous man it's 79 years.  For an indigenous woman it is 69 years, and 84 years for a non-indigenous woman. 

Aboriginal people suffer 10 times more from ear disease and hearing loss than non-Indigenous people.

90% of Aboriginal inmates at Darwin Correctional Centre have hearing loss while 95% of male Aboriginal inmates in Alice Springs have hearing loss.

83% of the prison population in the Northern Territory is Indigenous. The NT has the highest incarceration rate per 100,000 people in the world.

58% of juveniles detained in Australia are Indigenous (remember they only make up 2.5% of the population).

70% of youth in the prison have been sexually assaulted as children.

30% of adults in Aboriginal communities suffer from type-2 diabetes (3 times the rate of non-indigenous).

An aboriginal person is 10 times more likely to have kidney disease than non-indigenous.

54% of Indigenous adults smoke cigarettes, can be as high as 70% in some Northern Territory communities.

48% of Aboriginal mothers drink while pregnant

Aboriginal babies are 40 times more likely to have renal problems than other babies born.

28% of Aboriginal children have teenage mums.

More non-indigenous drink alcohol than indigenous people do. But indigenous people have much higher rates of alcohol abuse.

And with all this there are only 125 Indigenous doctors practicing in Australia, compared to 60,000 non-Aboriginal doctors.


http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-05-27/fisherman-king-retires/4035648/?site=indigenous&topic=latest

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2009-06-23/nt-has-one-of-worlds-highest-jail-rates/1328906

http://www.creativespirits.info/aboriginalculture/