Aim of AssessmentIndigenousAustralians carry an excessive burden of ill-health in comparison with Australia’s nonIndigenous population.The aims of this assessment are to demonstrate comprehensive,...

1
Indigenous health in Australia: Dementia
Introduction:
Dementia is described as a group of cognitive, behaviural and affective symptoms due
to dysfunction of brain over time, especially in late adulthood. In other words, it is
characterized by gradual loss of memory, thinking processes, functioning of
communication, decline in daily life activities and impaired social and emotional
functions usually occurring in senile age, i.e., above sixty years of life. Although,
there are more than 60 types of dementia, however, most common are Alzheimer’s
disease, vascular dementia and Korsakoff’s dementia (related to substance abuse).
Some major causes of dementia include damage to brain cells due to formation of
plaques of beta amyloids (in Alzheimer’s dementia), toxic loss, substance abuse,
improper and inadequate blood supply due to blockage in or rupture of blood vessels,
head injury or trauma, infection (e.g., HIV/AIDS), depression; some reversible causes
like constipation, imbalanced vitamins, pain dehydration, medical poisoning etc. It is
an incurable disease requiring proper, consistent clinical services and social supports
(Dementia Care Australia, 2011; Arkles et al., 2010). This essay is aimed at
presenting current status of dementia on indigenous population of Australia and
evaluating an effectiveness of relevant healthcare programmes focused on the
segment of population.
Current status of Dementia in Indigenous Australians:
Dementia, being one of the highest in world, is extremely prevalent in the indigenous
population of Australia especially above the age of 45 years. Its average rate of
prevalence in indigenous Australians is 12.4 % as compared to 2.4 % (i.e., one if
forty, common dementia) in non-indigenous people, being nearly five times grimly
high (Garvey et al., 2011; Smith et al, 2010). As expected, men are more risky
towards dementia because of rampant smoking, alcoholism and resulted head injury,
road accidents, stroke, epilepsy, lack of formal education, horse riding as compared to
women. More than 40% of indigenous population in remote areas of Australia has not
attended schools so far. Unfortunately, there are no clinical support services in these
regions (e.g., Western Australia, Kimberley communities, town of Derby etc) despite
the efforts and provisions from governmental and non-governmental agencies (Smith
et al., 2010, 2009; LoGiudice et al., 2011). Such diverse and deadly diseases have
affected the population with ‘double edged sword’, i.e., at one side it has decreased
the life expectancy of people in general, whereas, the working force of young
generation has also been impaired and paralyzed on other side. In this context, Bittles
et al (2008) conducted a study on 8724 individuals with dementia and other
intellectual disabilities aiming at assistance in planning for appropriate health and
support services, and observed that it was highly but inversely linked with life
expectancy of indigenous people. The mild, moderate and severe levels of cognitive
impairments were related to 56.6 years, 67.6 years and 74.0 years of life expectancy
respectively. These findings strongly indicated varied requirements and provisions of
services to people with dementia and other cognitive disabilities.
...