Bringing health equity to the bush
Rolf Gomes |
TEDxBrisbane
• December 2017
Cardiac disease is a major killer of people across Australia and the world. Early detection and treatment by a qualified cardiac specialist can be life-saving. But while people living in major cities take this access to services for granted, people in rural and regional communities are going without.
If you live outside a major city in Australia, you are almost twice as likely to die from heart disease – not because the medicine and treatments are unknown, but because we have been unable to effectively deliver the same level of care to country people as we do to their city cousins.
In order to challenge this health inequity, cardiologist Dr Rolf Gomes built a state of the art clinic-on-wheels, known as The Heart Truck. The Heart Truck brings cardiac and respiratory specialists and their equipment to the heart of regional Australia.