Oceania

The authors point out that Mātauranga Māori/Māori knowledge emphasises that pain and its healing should be considered multidimensional, incorporating physical, mental and relational components, existing in the spiritual realm and incorporating links between people, places, the past and future. They suggest that pain services incorporate this knowledge of the spiritual, social and psychological aspects of pain and pain management to provide more meaningful care for people with pain.

This Article supports SDG 3 by assessing the effectiveness of a hepatitis B model of care in Australia, suggesting that the model, involving primary health care, could be rolled out nationally or internationally. The authors suggest that the model could have positive implications particularly for low-income and middle-income countries.

Although Indigenous Australians critically ill with sepsis have similar short and long-term mortality rates, they present to hospital, die in-hospital, and die post-discharge significantly younger. Unique cohort characteristics may explain these outcomes, and assist clinicians, researchers and policy-makers in targeting interventions to these characteristics to best reduce the burden of sepsis in this cohort and improve their healthcare outcomes.

This article examines the role of echocardiography in assessing rheumatic heart disease (RHD) among pregnant women in the Northern Territory (NT of Australia, which has a high prevalence of RHD in the First Nations population.