My memories of Doomagee are not positive. On numerous occasions I have flown supplies into the town airstrip in preparation for the funeral services of a few of the locals. The supplies that I was transporting were hardly conducive to a peaceful funeral service and were supplied by the public purse. That is just one example of a mistake made in good faith by our public authorities and, probably, mostly detested by those in charge of local public health.

The problems there and in many places like it (Hall's Creek and Wilcannia spring to mind) are deeply seated and reach far beyond the material provision of modern services. The greatest problem is a deep social disfunction that disallows the community concerned to take any advantage of modern services and equipment. The successful implementation and supervision of the provision of such services and the allocation of their relevant equipment is the domain of extremely tallented, vocationally focused individuals that should be identified and funded accordingly. The counterintuitive drenching of the problem with funding based on hair-brained principals imposed by some far-flung university study has to end. This is not the domain of raw health interns or doctors who simply fail to fit any other sector of the health system.

This problem is a federal issue. Local relevant MP's such as Bob Katter should be empowered to personally recruit and choreograph effective programs that attack the problem from its roots rather than apply band aids to the symptoms. Australia is a signatory to numerous world organisations whose policies include the eradication of poor health outcomes, one of which is the fight against Rheumatic Fever. However, the mere existence of Rheumatic Fever itself is just a symptom of the greater, underlying problem.

There is no simple solution, but, there must be a solution.