NURS5097 - Immigrant Women and PHC Report

Immigrant Women and PHC 

Introduction

Primary health care is the first contact a person has to health system and relates to people who are not admitted to any hospital. Primary healthcare in Australia is controlled by the general practitioners (GP), but also includes nurses, midwives, aboriginal health care worker, dentists and pharmacists. The focus of primary health care is to provide equal health care to all, considering general practice services, early intervention, management and treatment and prevention and screening. The PHC services can be provided at home or community wide set ups. The primary goal of Primary Health Care Networks (PHNs) is to reduce the number of visits to emergency departments, chronic and complex illnesses are promoted and provided through an affordable system to make this happen (Health, 2018). According to the Alma-Ata (1978) the principles of primary health care are:

• “universal access and coverage on the basis of need
• health equity as part of development oriented to social justice
• community participation in defining and implementing health agendas
•  and intersectoral approaches to health” (Organization, 2003)

The principles of primary health care have been accepted by countries under World Health Organization (WHO). The role of PHNs is to provide primary healthcare for all the population without any biases. Vision of Alma-Ata was to make primary health accessible to everyone without exception, the community should participate and the affordability has to be according to the country’s economic conditions. Another aspect of the Alma-Ata was that the treatment of the diseases should first be decided to be acceptable to all communities that is nothing was to be enforced. Australia and WHO has a strategy planned for 2018-22 namely the Australia -WHO country cooperation strategy (CCS) 2018-22, this is to provide collaboration between WHO and Australian Government Department of Health. According to this CCS WHO will contribute to the health sector of Australia, Australia will create awareness of health priorities nationally and globally and both will work hand in hand to promote a healthy lifestyle for all (health, 2017).

Primary health care networks (PHNs) were created to provide health care especially for the sector od the population that are more vulnerable to bad health due to limited access and lack resources. This includes minorities such as Immigrant women. Mental health, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health, population health, health workforce, digital health, aged care, and alcohol and other drugs these are the 7 priorities set by the department of health for the PHNs. The PHNs are funded through Commonwealth set up by the Health care department, the PHNs are to follow given set of rules and work within the subject of the activity to be conducted, the records and the results are to be provided to the healthcare department for check and balance. 31 PHNs were set up by the government in 2014-2015 and a total of $852 million has been allocated to these PHNs for three years from 2015-2016 onwards. The eligibility criteria for PHNs include having skill based boards, qualified workers, general practitioner led clinical councils and PHNs must have connections with local hospitals to get closer to the people (health, 2018).       

Immigrants Australia

Looking at the population of Australia, in 2016 the total number of people above the age of 15 were 19.1 million of which 6.8 million were immigrants and of these 6.8 million around 1.9 million were born elsewhere and were 15 or over at arrival which was after 2006. This represents 10% of Australia’s population and 57% of these immigrants migrated recently and 588,200 had a permanent visa and 360,200 became Australian citizens (Statistics, 2017). All this is to show that the immigrant women (considering 50% of the total number of these recent migrants) is a minority in Australia but is still a significant part of the population and requires attention of the PHNs set up to serve all people in Australia.