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. “
Racism, and because you don’t know anything more about the story - and yet you’re making the same assumptions… Welll.
The doctors claimed justification for turning them away is largely irrelevant anyway, as doctors cannot turn a patient away that is in dire medical need without ensuring the patient has alternative care options immediately available, eg: another doctor nearby. Telling them to fuck off to Perth 3 hours away is in breech.
The story she’s sharing is from when she was around 30. She’s near 80 now. There was no shortage of rural doctors in the mid 1970s, so your complaint doesn’t even make sense.
About 10 or so doctors get struck off the register every year (of 10,000 doctors in WA), and it’s done by a thorough review process by the AHPRA. Its not like Fiona Stanley can just call a buddy and they’re gone - a whole team of people had to review the case, hear the doctor’s position in a hearing, and decide if the doctor had aggregiously failed in their duties and breached the code of conduct they’d agreed to uphold.
Discriminating doc can no longer get kids killed with negligence, and you take the position that the lady that helped flag the case for removal is “insufferable”? What a weird position to broadcast to the internet.