Australian Story - The Heart Bus

[icyfroth]

Cardiologist Rolf Gomes is putting the heart back into rural and regional health care. 

His brainchild is ‘the heart bus’, Australia’s first mobile cardiac clinic, delivering state-of-the-art cardiology diagnostic testing equipment on the back of a truck to rural communities.   Dr Gomes says there’s a real need for the service, because if you live in the country you are 44% more likely to die from heart disease than if you’re a city dweller.

“You can’t look at a situation like that and say the way to address that is to maintain the status quo, because whatever already exists, clearly we need to be doing more.” – Rolf Gomes, cardiologist

Born in Calcutta, Dr Gomes started out as an electrical engineer before turning to medicine.

The first time he saw a beating heart, with its “valves and plumbing and electrics”, he was “hooked”.

“It’s an amazing organ. It goes for 70 to 80 years.  It never stops.  You couldn’t go to Bunnings and buy a pump off the shelf and say I’ll come back in 80 years and hope it’s still working.”  – Rolf Gomes, cardiologist

https://tv.press.abc.net.au/australian-story-the-heart-bus

Loved watching this.

[davidc4430]

more power to those working in medicine outside the urban areas, this is where barnaby should be outspoken in the coalition.

those living in remote areas should be better served with facilities for health and well being.

if we can spend 50 billion dollars on submarines why cant we give good quality services to thos doing the hard yards in the outback. allways the outback rural people are having to beg for money just to keep basic things up and running. the flying doctor service would close down without donations, its a disgrace particularly when the country party are in power with the coalition.

[davidc4430]

oh, just had another thought with connection to another thread.

how many dollars has australia spent fighting a war we should never have been involved in and then 'stopping the boats' of refugees from that war?

how good a medical system could we have in our outback if instead of killing muslims in iraq we had put the money into saving lives here at home?

[icyfroth]

Exactly right.

The service is comparable to the Flying Doctor.