Airdate: Desperately Seeking Doctors: The Kimberley

Three years ago SBS aired Desperately Seeking Doctors, looking at Australia’s doctor crisis in regional Australia.

One of the three docs featured was Dr Mary Fortune, who left her home, family and friends in Scotland to work in Kalgoorlie.

Her brief encounter with Aboriginal health touched a nerve. Now in a follow-up series she’s back for a three month stint in an Aboriginal health service in Kununurra in NW Australia.

Australia may well be a prosperous developed nation but the health statistics filling the Kimberley clinic are Third World. Finding herself well outside her comfort zone, Dr Mary begins to wonder if this time she has bitten off more than she can chew.

Episode One
Working at the Ord Valley Aboriginal Health Service (OVAHS) in Kununurra and dealing with upwards of 120 patients a day, Dr Mary is thrown into the deep end of the health crisis facing the Kimberley. And the OVAHS clinic is a long way from her sedate waiting room in the Scottish Islands.

Against the backdrop of a resources bonanza, Dr Mary comes face to face with the health impacts on a community by-passed by the boom; including a homeless pensioner recently awarded the Order of Australia and the ticking time-bomb of heart disease for a grandmother trying to provide a home for young kids fleeing family feuds.

Tuesday 20 December at 7:30pm on SBS ONE.