Disparities hurt Native Americans' health

This population has higher rates of diabetes, cancer, childhood respiratory disease and deaths from injuries. Experts blame poverty, education levels and poor access to care.

By Victoria Stagg Elliott, AMNews staff. Aug. 25, 2003.

Some of the villages where Ted Mala, MD, provides care to Alaska Natives do not have running water. He travels mostly by plane because there are no roads. And when he arrives, he works in clinics held together by duct tape.

It's a sad state of affairs, and he believes this affects his patients. They are so disempowered they take no responsibility for their own care.

"Within the Indian health system, there are hospitals that are over 100 years old that are still running," said Dr. Mala, past president of the Assn. of American Indian Physicians and director of tribal relations at the Alaska Native Medical Center in Anchorage. "The system itself lends it to subservience and saying, 'Doctor, fix it.' "

He and others say this circumstance is the story behind the numbers released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this month. According to several papers published in Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, Native American and Alaska Native children have twice the rate of death caused by injuries or violence as do other children in the United States. More Native American and Alaska Native children are hospitalized for bronchial infection than any other group. The diabetes rate among these adults and children is double that of the rest of the country. Cancer rates among those in some regions are also significantly higher.