David Wongway is an elder of the Imanpa council in the Aboriginal community of Mount Ebenezer in the Northern Territory. The 200-strong community has been here for longer than anyone can remember and lives a remote existence far from the trappings of urban life in cities like Melbourne and Sydney. The nearest big town is Alice Springs, 200 kilometres to the northeast, and the next closest is a 10-hour drive to Adelaide, 1200 kilometres to the south. When a team of army medics arrived to perform mandatory health checks in July last year, Wongway was one of many in the community unsure of what was happening. 'But they [were] good, they helped us, he said. For most Australians, the lives of desert Aboriginal tribes in central Australia are hard to comprehend. Today, 85% of Australians live within 50 kilometres of the coastline while the Northern Territory has a population of just over 200 000 spread across an area of 1.34 million square kilometres with 104 distinct indigenous languages spoken. But there is more than just geography and skin colour that sets Wongway and his kinsmen apart. The average Aboriginal household earns only about 55% of an average Australian family, US$ 316 a week compared with US$ 575. Aboriginal poverty is associated with social problems such as unemployment and high imprisonment rates. It's in this context that the health outcomes of the Aboriginal population lag behind the rest of Australia. Average indigenous life expectancy is about 60 years for men and 68 for women--an average 17 years lower than that of the total population, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. Australia's 517 200 Aboriginals make up 2.5% of the population and are the country's most disadvantaged group. Their communities have higher infant mortality, and more drug abuse and alcoholism, than the rest of the population. They also suffer more from diseases associated with poor living such as scabies and pneumonia. Australia's indigenous are three times more likely to contract diabetes and are almost twice as likely to suffer heart disease between the ages of 35 and 44 than the total population. Aboriginals also have to deal with problems long eradicated in Australia's cities, such as trachoma. When the World Health Organization (WHO) launched a campaign in 1998 to eliminate trachoma globally by 2020, blinding trachoma still occurred in 54 countries. Australia was the only developed country on that list. The poor health of indigenous communities has been likened--by policy-makers and commentators--to the problems of the developing world. are few who understand the problems facing such communities as well as Dr Paul Torzillo. For the past 25 years, he has been leaving his home in Sydney to fly to the Nganampa Health Council in central Australia--a service that operates nine clinics that treat 3000 spread out across a vast area of 105 000 square kilometres. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Few Aboriginals are still living in the same makeshift camps and humpies --improvised shelters made out of bush materials--that they occupied when he first went there. But progress has been slow and Torzillo said this has been mirrored in the communities' health. There have been improvements in living conditions, he said, but the improvements haven't reached the critical level where can, for instance, wash reliably and frequently. Penetrating the heart of the country takes more than just a five-hour plane flight for like Torzillo, it also takes vision. Two weeks before the federal election in November 2007, the Australian Medical Association declared indigenous Australians to be the forgotten people of the election. But while the election may not have catapulted indigenous health to the forefront of debate, it nonetheless revealed two very different visions from Australia's two major political parties. …