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Ill artist linked to first swine death
Natasha Robinson | June 22, 2009
Article from: The Australian
A WELL-KNOWN Aboriginal artist, who lived with the first swine flu sufferer to die in Australia, travelled to Melbourne and returned to his remote community with flu symptoms but says he was cleared by local health authorities.
Bobby West Tjupurrula, whose 26-year-old son-in-law died in Royal Adelaide Hospital on Friday, said he had returned to Kiwirrkurra in remote central Australia from Melbourne a week before his younger relative fell ill.
Suffering flu symptoms, Mr West attended a clinic at Kintore, 180km east of Kiwirrkurra, about 10 days ago, and says he was cleared of swine flu.
"They told me I was all OK," said Mr West, a traditional owner of Kiwirrkurra and a spokesman for Papunya Tula Artists. "I had a flu, but it was just the normal flu."
Mr West said that after the clinic visit, he returned to his home in Kiwirrkurra to find his son-in-law -- who suffered from chronic heart, lung and kidney problems -- shivering and ill.
"When I came back he was coughing and he wanted to stay with the fire, to keep warm," Mr West said. "He was asking for the Log Cabin tobacco and I was thinking 'he's already sick, he shouldn't keep smoking'."
Kiwirrkurra in Western Australia lies more than 600km west of Alice Springs in the Gibson Desert and close to the Northern Territory-South Australian border. It is one of the most remote communities in Australia.
The Australian has learned that the young man had not left Kiwirrkurra for several weeks before he died. Originally from Balgo in Western Australia, he lived in Kiwirrkurra with his wife.
He was airlifted to Alice Springs Hospital last week with heart failure and transferred to the Royal Adelaide Hospital on Monday in a critical condition.
He tested positive for swine flu on Thursday and died on Friday afternoon in the intensive care unit. His death is believed to be only the second involving someone with the new strain of swine flu outside the Americas.
The details of the death came as indigenous people in central Australia called for health authorities to move urgently to contain the spread of swine flu in the desert.
There is widespread fear in remote Aboriginal communities that swine flu, which is experienced as a mild illness in most people, could have much more severe effects on indigenous people who already suffer chronic health problems.
Community leaders in central Australia are also concerned that the disease has spread between several remote communities in the desert, endangering those already in poor health.
WA Health Department chief health officer Tarun Weeramanthri said yesterday the department would send a public health team to Kiwirrkurra to review the deceased man's treatment.
A spokesman for the Northern Territory Health Department also said authorities would follow up Mr West's clinic visit at Kintore. He said it was unlikely the artist could have been cleared of swine flu so quickly because pathology tests would have to be sent away for testing.
GPs and Aboriginal health services around the country said yesterday they were ready to help the government roll out swine flu vaccine as soon as it became available.
Australian Medical Association vice-president Steve Hambleton said remote Aboriginal communities should be a top priority when the vaccine was distributed, and that every person who lived in a remote community should be vaccinated to build resistance to the virus.
"They should be top of the list, definitely," Dr Hambleton said. "The chances of a severe case of the flu occurring in an Aboriginal community is about three times what it would be in the rest of the population."
Swine flu has already taken hold in several desert communities. In one of those communities, Yuendumu, 325km northwest of Alice Springs, several people have been diagnosed with the virus.
Aboriginal health worker Connie Walit is concerned about the impact swine flu could have on indigenous people with existing health problems.
"With the chronic illness, it could be bad for them," Ms Walit said yesterday. She said anti-viral medication had been distributed among families whose relatives had come down with the virus.
Women in Yuendumu are anxious that they get swine flu vaccine as soon as it's available.
"The doctors should come in and give everyone the vaccination," said young mother Juliet Morris.
Several women expressed concern that swine flu would quickly spread to other desert communities because of a tendency among Aboriginal people in remote towns to travel widely and gather in large groups.
"People are travelling very far," said Georgina Wilson. "No one has been telling us about this swine flu or coming to help us, to help stop it spreading."
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