Diabetes Affects on Indigenous People

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Indigenous health Diabetes as an Indigenous Australians’ Health Issue: A Case Study This Purpose of this paper is to discuss and describes diabetes as major health issue among Indigenous Australians. The impact of diabetes on family, community and an individual’s wellbeing would be described and discussed using psychological, social, and historical cultural evidence. Development of diabetes in Aboriginal people, Healthcare policies and services provision, differences between Aboriginal construct of health and well-being and Western medical model would be described. Conclusion would argue reasons why diabetes remains a major problem among Aboriginal people. Aboriginal people have had to cope with immense change. Their social structure, cultural values and beliefs, family network and their hunter- gatherer lifestyle has been decimated in most communities, and those remaining were removed from their lands into Aboriginal settlements and forced to change their lifestyle (Jackson & Ward, 1999). Traditional Aborigines had a broad knowledge of the Australian landscape, and its flora and fauna. They lived on a diet of fresh meats, that the men hunted, such as kangaroo, fish, turtle, snake and lizard. This was supplemented by what the women collected from the land, native honey, fresh fruit and vegetables (Better Health Channel, 2006). This balanced diet of the traditional Indigenous community, along with the exercise exerted to collect the food, lead to a generally healthy people. However the hunter-gatherer process was no longer possible in many communities after colonisation. The sedentary European lifestyle that most modern Indigenous people live today has a readily available supply of foods, high in fat and sugar, combined with alcohol and cigarette smoking leads to diseases such as diabetes. Diabetes is major concern for Australian Aboriginal people, because

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