Cancer survival rates in Australia are some of the highest in the world, but many people, including Indigenous Australians and those living in regional areas, are falling far behind.
Jacinta Elston and Elise Sproll were both in their 30s when they faced breast cancer diagnoses, but research shows their outcomes could have been very different.However, First Nations Australians are 45 per cent more likely to die from cancer
"I'd had my second child, and he was about 10 months old when lump was examined," Professor Elston said.Professor Elston, an expert in Indigenous health policy and education who has been a consultant on the national cancer strategy, said she was one of the lucky ones. She has now been cancer free for 20 years.She helped develop the National Cancer Plan with the hope that it would ensure every Australian had equal access to the same high-quality care.
"The biggest issue that we now have is that cancer has become the leading cause of death for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people," Professor Elston said. "And I guess that must have prompted me to go home and … in bed that night. And I, yeah, I just found a lump." Ms Sproll said she believed she would have had a very different outcome had she been living in her hometown on the NSW Central Coast.Despite early detection and treatment, her cancer continued to grow during chemotherapy, and she needed surgery, another kind of chemo and was put on a clinical trial to stop it from spreading, an option she believed might not have been available to her if she was in regional Australia.
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