The Nganampa Health Council AGM has been further postponed until February or March 2023. Further information, including a date and time, will be provided soon. 

The Nganampa Health Council are please to be able to support Cherie Jones with her tertiary studies with an Anangu Scholarship. Cherie is studying a Diploma of Psychology at Charles Darwin University in Alice Springs.

Cherie is a Yankunytjatjara woman, descendent from the Cooma & Charlie Lester. She grew up at Amata Community, and is from Tupul Homeland.

She moved to Alice Springs in the early 90's, to pursue work. Since then, she worked with organisations such as Arrernte Council, NPY Women's Council, Pitjantjatjara Council and Tangentyere Council undertaking administrative executive assistant duties. She then moved to my first management role with Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education, where she managed the Alice Springs staff and campus grounds.

Cherie’s employment career took her back home to Amata in 2010, where she worked in mental health, environmental health and housing, managing government contracts in health and human services. She moved back in Alice Springs to pursue a change in career which led to her current studies. Cherie will finish the course at the end of 2019 and is hoping to gain employment as a counselling. Her aim is to keep studying and she intends to enrol in a Bachelor of Psychology.

This is a video spoken in Pitjantjatjara language about the My Health record, the new Australian medical record that will be created for all Australians, and what to do if you don’t want one. Nganampa clinics have more information about the My Health Record and have people who can answer any questions about this.

https://www.myhealthrecord.gov.au/sites/g/files/net5181/f/stakeholder-materials/myhealth_60_pitjantjatjara.mp4 

  

Friends and staff at Nganampa Health have donated money to the Anangu Scholarship Fund. Any Anangu undertaking tertiary studies are eligible to apply. Currently we are supporting Pirpantji Nelson who is studying medicine.

More information on the scholarship fund can be found here.

You can also read about Pirpantji in our 2015 Annual Report.

Any Aboriginal people studying in a health related field might also be interested in the House Call Doctors Futures in Health Scholarhship.

Rheumatic Heart Disease (RHD) is sadly still a common problem in remote Aboriginal communities. The APY Lands are no exception with more than 50% of the known cases of RHD in South Australia on the APY Lands.

With funding from the Commonwealth and State Government, we operate a RHD program to better manage patients with this condition. The program has been very successful with better medication compliance. See the graph below.

Nganampa Health Council board and staff members are deeply saddened about the passing of Yami Lester OAM on Friday, 21st July 2017.To work with Yami was an inspiration. His sense of humour, his professionalism, his cross cultural awareness and skills, his attention to detail and his love for all Aboriginal people and above all his total commitment to social justice provided a model that inspired many other people, both black and white, to take up the fight.

The photo is of the first UPK meeting with SA Health circa 1985 in Adelaide. Yami was instrumental in this project.

Congratulations to our visiting podiatrist Sara Jones for winning the Chancellors Award for Community Service from the University of South Australia. The prize money will be used to purchase equipment that will be used on their visits to the APY Lands. Sara and Cyndi run a fantastic podiatry service.

Anangu staff at our Tjilpi Pampaku Ngura (Aged Care Facility) have, since 2006, been receiving training from Tafe SA. The training has been very successful and a large number of Anangu have received certificates in aged care. You can read about this program at this link and also this link.

Thanks to Tafe for all your assistance with this program over the years and congratulations to all our staff who have obtained certificates through the training.