Maternal & infant health (for Australia's Indigenous Peoples) - Essay Example

The richness and the complexity of the original culture of these people was poorly understood by the colonisers and their current descendants, leading to legislations and polices that worked against them. Thus, the indigenous Australians suffered from social exclusion, colonisation and economic marginalisation (Thackrah and Scott, 2007). As a consequence, the Indigenous people not only lost their spiritual well being, they also suffered from other aspects like racism, poverty, poor economy and poor health.

One of the significant consequences and current day problem is poor health (Thackrah and Scott, 2007). Poor health has affected all age groups and both sexes among the Indigenous community (Thackrah and Scott, 2007). Of significant interest is poor maternal health. In this essay, the influence of various government policies and legislation on maternal health of Indigenous Australian population will be discussed. The original inhabitants of the continent of Australia and the nearby islands are known as the Indigenous Australians.

They are either Torres Strait Islanders or Aboriginal Islanders and they make up more than 2.5 percent of the population of Australia. While the former are indigenous to the Islands of Torres Strait located in the Northern part of Queensland near Papua New Guinea, the latter are indigenous to the mainland Australia, Tasmania and some adjacent islands. The Indigenous communities are diverse and are a mixture of various customers, cultures and languages (Thackrah and Scott, 2007). Prior to colonisation, Indigenous people were active and hunter gatherers.

They ate food that was low in fat, sugar, salt and high in fibre. They expended energy to obtain food and water. Thus they maintained good health. However, following colonisation, the change in dietary and lifestyle habits led to development of chronic degenerative diseases like hypertension, diabetes mellitus and cardiovascular disease. They subsequently became exposed to various communicable diseases that rapidly spread among their communities (Anderson and Grossman, 2003). They were forced to be influenced by the Western ideas of health and wellness which basically were different in the Indigenous communities.

For example, while according to the WHO (1946) "health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity", according to the Aboriginal people, health is a multi-dimensional concept that embraces all aspects of living. According to the National Aboriginal and Island Health Organisation, "health is not just the physical well being of the individual but the social emotional and cultural well-being of the whole community. This is a whole-of-life view and it also includes the cyclical concept of life.

” (Eckermann et al 1992). Thus, health of the Indigenous people declined because of not only physical contact with the European settlers, but also because of destruction of their culture and development of mental pain. Principals and beliefs about health were incompatible between the Western practitioners and Aboriginal people. For example, the Indigenous people are resistant to hospital attendance because they think that it is a place to die. They rely more on community