Indigenous children and deadly conditions

A three part series on deadly conditions found in Indigenous Australian children that do not tend to affect non-Indigenous children has been published this week in The Conversation. Each article, on trachoma, otitis media and rheumatic heart disease, describes the condition and its epidemiology and looks at what we need to do to eliminate the problem.

Why is trachoma blinding Aboriginal children when mainstream Australia eliminated it 100 years ago? is by Hugh Taylor, Emma Stanford and Fiona Lange from the University of Melbourne.  According to their research, Indigenous people at the age of 40 three times the rate of vision loss and six times the rate of blindness than non-indigenous adults.  Trachoma is present in 4-5% of Indigenous children, yet it "disappeared from mainstream Australia more than 100 years ago with improved hygiene facilities, water infrastructure and living conditions."

Why are Aboriginal children still dying from rheumatic heart disease? is by Professor Jonathan Carapetis from the Telethon Kids Institute.  He provides figures that show that young Indigenous Australians in the Northern Territory are up to 122 times more likely to have rheumatic heart disease than their non-Indigenous counterparts.

Amanda Leach at the Menzies School of Health Research wrote the third article:  Bulging ear drums and hearing loss: Aboriginal kids have the highest otitis media rates in the world. "Tragically, almost all Aboriginal children (90%) in remote areas have some form of otitis media: 50% have glue ear, 30% have acute otitis media, and around 15% have runny ears."