Women and Indigenous people living in the bush are having nearly decades of their lives shaved off due to a lack of basic health services, a new report from the Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS) has revealed. 

The Best for the Bush, Rural and Remote Health Base Line 2022 report showed women living in very remote parts of Australia were likely to die 19 years earlier than their city counterparts.

It is a statistic that Rebecka Britton, a long-time resident of remote north-west Queensland community Boulia, finds “incredibly shocking and intimidating”.

“It makes me feel like I need to do something about it — that’s not OK,” she said.

“The problem solving needs to commence because it is extremely challenging trying to access primary health care out here.

The RFDS report also found that men in very remote areas were likely to die 14 years earlier than those living in the city.

Meanwhile, the health of Indigenous people in the bush was even poorer.

First Nations people accounted for 32 per cent of Australia’s remote and very remote population in 2022.

Their life expectancy was 14 years less than their non-Indigenous counterparts, the RFDS report found.

RFDS Federation executive director Frank Quinlan said health systems were failing outback Australians.

“The RFDS are delivering services in areas where other parts of the health system are just not working,” he said.

People dying of preventable diseases

The report found that a lack of access to primary health care meant people in the bush were dying from diseases that could be easily managed with basic health services.

The biggest barriers to accessing primary healthcare in the bush, according to the report, were social isolation, poor access to transport, and perceived relative importance of other events, such as harvest time and cultural barriers.

However, the most notable barrier was the absence of primary healthcare services within a reasonable distance, highlighted as being a 60-minute drive from a person’s place of residence.