ABORIGINAL
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GETTING READY FOR COVID The COVID outbreak is disrupting face-to-face services, but Diabetes WA will always be available to help people in Aboriginal and remote communities manage their health, writes NATALIE JETTA As I write this, we’re seeing news of confirmed COVID cases in the remote Mantamaru Community, aka Jameson, which is located 1000km east of Kalgoorlie. People who know about or live on the Ngaanyatjarra Lands have been concerned about the virus getting in there, partly because vaccination numbers are pretty low. It does worry me that the rate of vaccination in Aboriginal and remote Communities is not where it should be. Back in January, Western Australia’s Aboriginal population had the worst rate of vaccination anywhere in the country and it’s still not improving fast enough. With the borders open, it’s so important that everyone — particularly those in remote areas — get their COVID jab as soon as possible. I know there’s always an understandable concern when there’s a big push around some new medicine and I know there’s a lot of bad information out there. It’s natural that people find themselves listening to grapevine gossip and getting scared of the unknown. Especially when you don’t have easy access to actual facts or professional advice. Part of our preparation for living with COVID has been to make sure that West Australians with diabetes — wherever they are living — have easy access to support and advice 28
whenever they need it. Although we won’t be running face-to-face sessions for a while, we will be running online workshops and we’ll also be sharing the latest information and health advice through our website and our dedicated Facebook page. You may already have seen our new COVID video which I hope will be an antidote to some of the misinformation that’s out there. If you don’t have easy access to technology, but can’t — or don’t want to — leave the house to find support, you can always give us a call. Our Telehealth services remain open and ready to provide you with the help you need to manage your diabetes in a time of COVID. This is really important if you’re living in a remote community and you’ve just been diagnosed with diabetes. Getting access to the usual face-to-face help might not be so easy in the middle of an outbreak. Hopefully, you’ll still be able to make appointments with a clinic in your area, but get in touch with us for all your needs around diabetes education and support. If you can’t call our telehealth service, you can always get in touch through our Facebook page. We’ll do our best to get back to you quickly. One of the biggest disruptions to my
work life is that we won’t be running our DESY education sessions for a little while, as travel in and out of remote Communities has been severely limited. We know how important these sessions have been to Aboriginal people living with diabetes and I hope that we can get them up and running again in the near future. We’re also having conversations about how we could effectively offer an online version of the session, while being aware that not everyone living in remote Communities has easy access to a reliable internet connection. Metro sessions are also on pause, sadly. My colleague Kathy Lemon has been busy lately delivering diabetes education to newly trained Aboriginal Health Workers at Marr Mooditj Training Centre. She has also been running Smarts sessions at Ngulla Mia (Perth’s Richmond Wellbeing Centre). We delivered MonitorSmart and our Feltman training program and had intended to deliver FootSmart, until the current outbreak made that impossible. We had also scheduled a DESY session at Nidjall Waangan Mia in Mandurah in March that will hopefully be rescheduled. The Smarts sessions for Aboriginal people living with diabetes are a new initiative for us. Although the material hasn’t been especially adapted in the
