A FORMER Okehampton medic has recently returned from a life-changing experience working as a flying doctor treating Aboriginal people in the tropical Northern Territory of Australia. The trip was a huge challenge for Andrew Stainer-Smith, as he was faced with treating patients in the 40C outback where belief in superstitions and evil spirits is still widely held. Andew and his wife Ruth and their 12-year-old son Scott uprooted from Sticklepath two years ago to head Down Under after 22 years as a GP in the town. As a flying doctor, he had to respond to evacuation calls from remote Aboriginal communities where survival is a struggle, covering thousands of square miles. Andrew said flying was the only way of getting in and out of the bush during the wet season when rivers could rise from two metres to 17 metres in 24 hours. In the dry season travel was by four wheel drive vehicle, so Andrew soon learnt how to cross a river without getting eaten by crocodiles who swum underwater. ?Crocodiles were a very real risk. A boy aged 20 was taken just before Christmas while clearing mud from his quad bike at the water?s edge,? he said. Andrew said the health of Aboriginal people was dreadful, much worse than other indigenous populations in the world. ?Conditions are heart-wrenching with terrible child and adult mortality. Western medicine is of limited value.? He said children die from rheumatic fever and there are many cases of leprosy, syphilis, TB and many other diseases. Andrew said during his time in the outback, he had come across diseases he had not even heard of. ?It is extraordinary for Aborigines to live beyond the age of 50. Their life expectancy is 20 years less than white people,? Andrew said. ?There are a lot of mental health problems and social issues of alcoholism and petrol sniffing.? Andrew said the family?s home was broken into several times by petrol-sniffers. Andrew was working in soaring temperatures in what he described as the ?pioneer country? of Australia. For some periods he was the only doctor covering ten clinics spread over 500 miles with around 60,000 potential patients in the catchment area. ?It was physically, day to day, more demanding than I had even imagined,? he said. Andrew said he had to be careful to consider the problems presented by cultural differences. ?It is a very complicated culture. Family relationships are very difficult, everyone belongs to a different skin group, of which there are 16. People are known as ?poison cousins? if they are from close skin groups, so there were times when nurses would not be able to help with a patient because they would be in a poison relationship,? he explained. Andrew said he had been taken aback by the attitudes of white Australians towards their Aboriginal neighbours. ?Professionally I found the degree of institutional racism difficult to handle. The degree of deprivation for medical provision I don?t think is all by accident. They seem to have a peculiar kind of blindness about the poverty and the two worlds don?t interact.? Andrew said he had also learnt a lot about the need for teamwork while working in the difficult conditions in Australia. ?It was about actually getting a team working well together, and you have to identify real team workers and often, it is not the people you would expect.? In particular he paid tribute to the work of the Aboriginal nurses, many of whom were unmarried women who would work in the outback for a couple of years, before moving on to take up better-paid nursing posts in the city. After a few months, Andrew decided to concentrate on GP work in the communities, Ruth worked to get prescriptions and diagnoses on to a computer which the Aboriginal clinic staff could then use. Andrew said one of his most lasting achievements had been the setting up of the computer system, which empowered the local health workers. Andrew said the whole family had enjoyed the experience of living in the outback. ?Scott became a true traveller, having lessons from the School of the Air. His friends were up to eight hours drive away, some from cattle stations the size of Dorset. He ate bush tucker, including kangaroo tail and green ants.? Since coming back in March, Andrew had been carrying out locum work, although he was now considering moving into some area of psychiatry. He said it had been a ?great wrench? to leave behind all his patients in Okehampton, who he had built up strong relationships with. l Andrew and Ruth will be presenting a slide show and talk at Sticklepath Village Hall, next Thursday, July 14 at 7.30pm to share their experiences of life in the outback. The evening is free of charge, but donations to Save the Children will be welcome.
