Swine flu medics in dash to township

AN emergency medical response crew will today rush antiviral drugs and masks to the isolated indigenous community that was home to the first swine flu sufferer to die in Australia.

AN emergency medical response crew will today rush antiviral drugs and masks to the isolated indigenous community that was home to the first swine flu sufferer to die in Australia.

The team will land at Kiwirrkurra in Western Australia, more than 600km west of Alice Springs in the Gibson Desert, as doctors and health services warn of the extra risk posed to indigenous communities by the virus.

Public health experts are worried that swine flu is likely to hit Aboriginal communities hard, because many people suffer health conditions that make them vulnerable to the virus.

Northern Territory Health Minister Kon Vatskalis said yesterday the government remained vigilant in responding to the illness and was monitoring developments in remote communities.

Antiviral medications and personal protective equipment had been distributed to all remote health centres and general practices, he said.

In communities where swine flu has broken out, immediate testing and treatment was being offered to people whose pre-existing health conditions made them more vulnerable.

Pediatric respiratory physician Anne Chang warned that an outbreak of swine flu could have severe effects in remote Aboriginal areas.

"An outbreak in those communities would be quite severe -- a lot of children would probably need to be hospitalised and deaths are a possibility," Dr Chang said. "Because these people are living in squalor conditions, any outbreak is usually worse than elsewhere."

Dr Chang said one in 70 Aboriginal children in remote communities across the nation suffered from lung disease.

"The adults also have a high incidence of chronic lung disease. And they have other risk factors, which include diabetes, metabolic syndrome, heart and kidney disease," Dr Chang said.

A doctor, nurse and manager from Western Australia's Kalgoorlie Health Service will fly to Kiwirrkurra today to begin assessing how swine flu reached the community.

Staff at the remote central Australian health clinic in Kintore yesterday denied they had cleared a well-known Aboriginal artist -- who shared a house with the first swine flu sufferer to die in Australia -- of the illness following a trip to Melbourne.

West Australian health authorities will today speak to Bobby West Tjupurrul, father-in-law of the 26-year-old man from Kiwirrkurra who died last week, as they try to piece together how swine flu was transmitted to the most isolated Aboriginal community in Australia.

Mr West told The Australian this week that he returned from Melbourne suffering from the flu about a week before his son-in-law, who suffered several chronic illnesses, was airlifted to hospital from Kiwirrkurra and later died in Adelaide.

Mr West said before returning to Kiwirrkurra from Melbourne, he attended the Pintupi Homelands Health Service at Kintore, 180km east of Kiwirrkurra, and was cleared of having swine flu.

But the manager of the clinic at Kintore, Paul Button, said yesterday the clinic had no record that Mr West had seen a nurse or a doctor there.

WA health authorities said yesterday there were no other cases of swine flu confirmed at Kiwirrkurra. However, over the Northern Territory border at Kintore, two cases had been confirmed, Mr Button said.

In another development, a 23-year-old Melbourne woman who fell ill while on holiday in Bali may become Indonesia's first case of swine flu, if hospital tests confirm she has the virus.

Additional reporting: AAP