Indigenous children under-15 years old are up to eight times more likely to be hospitalised with pneumonia or other bronchial infections than non-indigenous ones, it said.
Based on the Mount Isa Hospital admission records from between 2007 and 2011 of 276 children with an acute lower respiratory tract infections, it found 77 per cent were Indigenous.
The report said it is a comparable rate to the Northern Territory, which ranks amongst the worst in the world.
“From published rates from Alice Springs, to which we compared ourselves, and then to published rates on population basis in all other countries who publish that kind of data, from Africa to Asia, it’s not rocket science,” said report co-author John Whitehall, a professor of Paediatrics and Child Health at the University of Western Sydney.
Professor Whitehall said Close The Gap strategies in the Mt Isa region are “not working”.
The journal article said the level of child lung infections in north-west Queensland are rising and under-reported, while they have stabilised in the Northern Territory and are falling in Western Australia.
Professor Whitehall blames lack of doctors in the Mount Isa and remote Aboriginal communities as a significant factor but said there were other causes too.
“Poverty to over-crowding in houses to lack of taking them to the health care system early enough to issues of hygiene,” he said.
“We were also alluding to a genetic pre-disposition but that has not been proven.”
