The health gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people starts at birth. The target to halve the gap in child mortality rates is not on track. In fact, it has widened to 2.4 times higher for Indigenous children. Preterm births are ...

In the five-year period between 2011–12 and 2015–16 there was a nearly 30 per cent growth in palliative care hospitalisation. Add to this the 160,00 Australians who die each year – 70 per cent due to expected causes – a ...

A new report released today shows that overall use of antibiotics in the community fell between 2015 and 2017 – the first decline in 20 years. However, the Third Australian report on antimicrobial use and resistance in human health, revealed ...

What is the Gut Microbiota? The human body is inhabited by trillions of microbes, mostly bacteria but also viruses and fungi (1). The majority of these microbes inhabit the human intestinal system, which is called the gut microbiota (Figure 1). ...

Pneumococcal infections can cause serious diseases including bacteraemia, meningitis and pneumonia. Prevenar 13® (Pneumococcal polysaccharide conjugate vaccine, 13-valent adsorbed) is used regularly in infants as part of the Australian National Immunisation Program (NIP),1 but it may not be common knowledge that ...

The inaugural Health Minister’s award for nursing trailblazers has been awarded to a Canberra nurse for her work in improving the delivery of palliative care to Australians living in residential aged care. Nikki Johnston, a palliative care nurse practitioner based ...

Pressure injuries are expensive for our health system, hugely distressing for patients and, most of all, preventable and predictable. That is according to UTS professor of nursing Debra Jackson. "They are so distressing," she said. "Once a person gets a ...

For Dr Anne O’Callaghan it started 10 or 15 years ago when complications occurred after her cancer surgery. “I couldn't get anybody to hear that I was worried about my paralysed legs and my pain,” she tells me. "And I think ...

A trial of new cleaning guidelines used in Australian hospitals has significantly reduced major healthcare-associated infections. Trialled over 11 hospitals, cleaning practices improved from 55 to 76 per cent in bathroom areas and from 64 to 86 per cent in ...

Quiet and private, or isolated and hard to manage. These are the flipsides in the increasing argument for and against single occupancy hospital rooms. There is a growing trend internationally for single occupancy rooms, but the dearth of literature in ...