Last week I had a flight up the Gibb River road to the community of Kupingarri. This remote community is on the Kimberly plateau, near the Mount Barnett Roadhouse. For the last 10 years or so, there has been a full time nurse in the community, staffing the clinic. Because its affiliated with Jurrugk and DAHS, there is an emphasis on preventive care, although that doesn't keep the locals from eating the ice cream and junk food stocked at the Roadhouse. The environmental health worker for the Shire of Derby flew out with us to inspect their water and sewer systems. He found them very satisfactory- a huge contrast to my Yulumbu flight. The clinic as you can see in the pictures [click it for slideshow] is clean and relatively modern. I saw a wide variety of children and adults on a very busy day.

Kuppinjari

We turned around on Friday and drove to Broome, taking the late night flight back to Perth for the WACRRM meeting (see blog entry below). It was a very nice conference on Men's Health, and I was pleased to find an emphasis on Aboriginal health.

Perth WACRRM Meeting

I attended talks on mental health, nutrition, ear health and infection, and a review of "Brief Interventions for Blokes". Vicki found me a nice sport jacket which I wore to the Conference evening dinner & dancing entertainment. We did a bit of browsing at the bookstores and had some nice walks in the brisk "cold" (55-65 F) autumn weather.


Returning from Perth Sunday night, my colleage Cyril drove us back to Derby in the dark. Although we saw many cows, often in the road, we managed to avoid any close encounters. We spent the drive listening to Cyril's story. Son of a university professor in Burma (Myanmar), he was a medical student and involved in the human rights movement of Aung San Suu Kyi. Now 36 years old, he spent 6 months in their prisons for being the president of the student body and demonstrating for human rights. All of his family left Burma, but he had stayed behind hoping to finish his medical studies. After his prison term, he emigrated to Australia and finished medical school here. He is now a Registrar, training to get his GP "Qualification". (This is similar to being a Resident in the U.S. except that GP training is onsite, in a working practice, supervised by older, more experienced GPs.) A devout Buddist, Cyril has been called to medicine to relieve the sufferings of others. He plans to go on to study Palliative Care next January after he finishes his term at DAHS.

I spent most of this week, except for Anzac Day, at DAHS seeing patients, although yesterday had a flight to Ngallagunda (the first "g" is silent), a beautiful community farther up the Gibb River road. This was the first "slow" clinic we have had, with my time spent seeing only one very old woman, and doing a bit of talking and teaching with the nursing staff. [Click picture below for slideshow]

Ngallagunda

Ngallagunda is high on the plateau, up over 500 metres altitude. The community as been well laid out, it has a Catholic school and also has a full-time nurse, Mary Jane, who staffs the clinic. The dentist was also visiting yesterday, so many of the children and adults were up at the school having their teeth examined. In a week of so, those that need care will travel south to Kupingarri where the dentist will haul in a dental chair and do tooth repairs for a few days.

Today is a day of rest, with a swim in the pool, a few home repairs, and getting ready to go to Broome. We will spend next week with the students from Derby, Broome and Port Hedland all in Broome for FARTS (Formative Assessments in Rural Training)- essentially midterm exams that don't count for a grade, and do some workshops for the group of 18 while they are all in one place. I will be teaching about ear health, and pneumatic otoscopy and tympanometry. The RCS has booked us into the pricey Cable Beach Resort. It is tourist season, and hard to find inexpensive accomodation in Broome.

I must admit to feeling a bit whipsawed, going between Aboriginal rural communities and the Western high tech ambiance of Perth and Broome on such a reciprocating schedule. It certainly brings home the disparities in wealth and housing here. Its hard not to feel both guilty and lucky to be able to do this. Vicki and I are both looking forward to the beach, as we have not yet dipped ourselves in the Indian Ocean.

Click the pictures below a "you are there" 360 degree movie of a beautiful Ngallagunda morning. Listen for the birds, and the children on the swings.