The NT Government tells prospective hospital recruits to Katherine it is good place to work because lots of people there are sick.
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"Our population is arguably one of Australia's most disadvantaged, with amongst the poorest health and greatest per capita mortality statistics in the country," reads the Government's Katherine Hospital recruitment campaign.
Most Katherine residents are unfortunately used to being told they are the "worst" of some particular statistic or other.
Health diseases and homelessness rates are some of the worst in the nation.
Katherine's high Indigenous population accounts for most but all of those terrible numbers.
Katherine appears to punch above its weight when it comes to be worst at, but death?
The "greatest per capita mortality statistics in the country".
This government advice strongly suggests more people are dying than anywhere else.
Don't live in Katherine, because people there die young.
These latest statistics tend to agree.
Across Australia the average age at death is 81, in Katherine it is 66.
People here live about 15 years less than the average.
Victorian men live past 80 years on average and women in Victoria can expect to reach 85.7 years.
The NT Government provided Katherine Times with a set of publicly available mortality statistics which it said supported its macabre recruiting campaign.
Top 5 killers in Katherine (men)
1 - Coronary heart disease
2 - Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease
3 - Lung cancer
4 - Land transport accidents
5 - Suicide
Top 5 killers in Katherine (women)
1 - Dementia/Alzheimers Disease
2 - Diabetes
3 - Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease
4 - Breast cancer
5 - Colorectal cancer.
In 2017 the NT Health Department release a cancer study of Katherine it said showed PFAS contamination of water was not causing cancer clusters at some had claimed.
NT chief medical officer Dr Hugh Heggie said the research showed Katherine's cancer statistics were even lower on average than the rest of the NT.
"This analysis suggests there is no evidence to to indicate higher evidence of cancers in Katherine Health District compared with the rest of the Top End, the rest of the NT and the national rates," the cancer study concluded.
The Northern Territory Men's Health Report Card 2019 published by the Australian Men's Health Forum (AMHF) highlights a number of areas of concern including the fact that men in the NT are dying three years (3.1) younger than women on average.
The report draws on most recent data from a range of government sources and states:
- Three in four heart disease deaths under 65 are men
- Three in four suicides are men
- Four out of five road deaths are male
- Five out of six workplace deaths are men
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