An Australian x ray

Its like when you are asked to describe an x ray and you see a significant blob: you know it really is important, but you dont know what it means. That was what my education in the health of Australias Aboriginal population was like. Sometimes it would be obvious and spoken about in cold hard facts, and I would feel guilty. But most of the time it was shadowy and uncertain. A brief mention in a lecture, maybe a passing comment by a statistician. It resembled an undifferentiated tumour that everyone found hard to talk about because its management was too complex.

As an Australian medical student I was meant to understand the facts ‘life expectancy 19 years lower than the rest,’ and ‘unacceptable infant mortality.’ But growing up …