SYDNEY, July 2 (Xinhua) -- Indigenous Australians are two and a half times more likely to suffer from multimorbidities, the presence of two or more chronic diseases, than non-indigenous Australians, according to research released on Monday by the University of New South Wales (UNSW).
"We were looking for things like chronic ischemic heart disease, heart failure, diabetes, liver disease and also some mental health morbidities like depression and alcohol and drug abuse," author of the study, Dr Deborah Randall told Xinhua.
"We defined multimorbidity as two or more of these kinds of chronic conditions."
Researchers from UNSW, led by Randall, added that poverty, stress and poor access to health care are amongst the reasons for the disparity.
"The social determinants of health such as poverty, income, education, access to health care, affordable housing, stress, racism and marginalisation - all of these things are really crucial to understanding the health differences and to addressing them." Randall said
According to the study, "life expectancy at birth of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples is estimated to be 11.5 years lower for men and 9.7 years lower for women than for other Australians," which Randall said is linked with heightened rate of multimorbidity.
"Multimorbidities is increasingly recognised internationally as a challenge because health systems do tend to focus on single diseases and single clinical specialities," Randall said.
"People are coming in with these combinations of morbidities and that's why we wanted to focus on that and have a look at how that might impact on the health gap for Aboriginal people."
The study used hospital admissions and linked mortality data from 5,437,018 residents from the state of New South Wales, of which 2.2 percent were Aboriginal.
"(Of the Aboriginal patients) 31.5 percent had at least one morbidity and 16.1 percent had two or more, compared with 25.0 percent and 12.1 percent of non-Aboriginal patients," the study said.
"Our research is pointing to a need for ongoing funding of accessible, comprehensive and particularly, culturally safe primary health care services for Aboriginal Australians, over and above the general population need," Randall said.
