ABORIGINAL WOMEN IN GNOWANGERUP

The Health Care Needs of Pregnant Aboriginal Women in Gnowangerup



The Health Care Needs of Pregnant Aboriginal Women in Gnowangerup

Introduction

Health is a valuable asset to everyone. No one can compromise on his/her health in anyway for anything. Every other wordily desire comes after health in one's life. Only a healthy person is able to enjoy all blessings of nature and life. The concept of health care reflects the treatment and intervention of various sickness and diseases both mental and physical. Every human being suffering from different types of diseases and problems may have distinctive health care needs. All the medical practitioners, doctors, nurses and other medical staff engaged in health care settings are liable for delivering primary, secondary, and tertiary health care services to all patients equally.

In todays' fast times, everyone is in a rush to attain the maximum and better quality services in metro cities. But this trend has always been slowed at community level. People living in communities or small groups still face problems in availing health care services and majority of them are not even aware of possible health care interventions. Pregnant women and their families particularly are found to be more vulnerable group with respect to health care facilities and needs in Australia.

The main purpose of this paper is to investigate the issues faced by Pregnant Aboriginal women in Gnowangerup. The diseases prevalent in these groups, statistics pertaining to this community, programs and activities formulated to fight against these deficiencies, analysis of health indicators, role of nursing in this cause, formation of an appropriate plan in this regard, and evaluation of taken actions and recommendations for the existing framework.

Background of Community Health Need Analysis

The Gnowangerup community health center is actively engaged in fulfilling the community health care needs and carries forward all the relevant activities via Gnowangerup Community Health Centre. The primary health care issues faced in this community include aboriginal health, asthma problems, diabetes, burned injuries, drug addiction like smoking, alcohol, cardiac diseases, and aboriginal smoking (1, 2009). The community center is successfully working towards establishment of a free public hospital care.

Dr Alice Rumbold has researched in this field and provided the valid statistics that there are about 3.8% of pregnant women identified as aboriginal in all communities of Australia during 2007. Research has shown, the main objective and highly concerned issue for these groups and women was to attain the better quality of health care services for their newborn babies. The aboriginal pregnant women may age from 15 to 40 years with maximum fertility rates touching up to 120 as compare to all other usual pregnant women. The significance of health care needs for the aboriginal pregnant women in Australia can be estimated from higher mortality rates of mothers i.e. 45.9 and father i.e. 15.7 and infants i.e. 12.3 as compare to all other normal cases (2, 2008).

The higher mortality rates in infants has led to increasing mortality rates in children aging from 0 to 4 years ...