Interesting read about an interesting woman, couple of excerpts…
The trailblazing public health activist reflects on childhood dreams, hard-won lessons and why healthcare starts long before anyone gets sick
during her early days as a junior doctor at Princess Margaret hospital in Perth. “There was an Aboriginal boy, maybe four or five, who’d come in from a remote community,” she says. “He had severe diarrhoea and dehydration. And he died in my arms.” She pauses. “I was 25. And I remember thinking, I don’t know if I can keep doing clinical work. I need to understand how we prevent this.”
She recalls one trip to Narrogin – “one of the most racist towns in WA” – where a local doctor had refused to treat an Aboriginal child without upfront payment. “The mother raced the kid to Katanning and it died on the way,” she says. “So Eric and I got that doctor struck off the register.”
She’s outspoken about the dangers of the North West Shelf extension, describing climate change as “the biggest threat to human health”. Her disappointment over the failed voice to parliament referendum is equally fierce. “
Firstly I’m a bit suss as the whole thing feels a bit like PR for her book.
However:
The whole system is pretty fucked. People are overworked and underpaid so that the wealthy grifters of society can make as much profit as possible while grinding the population down to dust. It’s no secret what’s wrong with things and until we have an actual revolution about the way society works I don’t see it changing.
We could start by treating insatiable greed as a mental illness and nipping it in the bud during early education.
It really is a mental illness, but it’s normalised and celebrated.