Australia 21

Listen to Australia 21, a 28-year-old man from Sydney and Macksville, New South Wales, Australia. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 28

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 13/03/1980

PLACE OF BIRTH: Macksville, New South Wales

GENDER: male

ETHNICITY: Caucasian

OCCUPATION: physician

EDUCATION: post-tertiary

AREA(S) OF RESIDENCE OUTSIDE REPRESENTATIVE REGION FOR LONGER THAN SIX MONTHS:

He has spent a significant amount of time in Sydney, where he was residing at the time of this interview.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH: N/A

The text used in our recordings of scripted speech can be found by clicking here.

RECORDED BY: David Nevell

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 04/07/2008

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): N/A

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

Um … uh … there’s a variety of diseases but … we … would — In Australia they would be diagnosed on a kidney biopsy.  But we don’t have access to that … um … diagnostic information here.  So we … uh … we just ass — we make an assumption that that’s the problem. And, um, by the time we see them the kidneys have … have gone. They’ve uh …  And, uh, we have to institute treatment.  Emergently, usually via a line — which is inserted into their necks …, which have a lot of problems of their own. And, um, there’s — there’s not a lot of understanding of kidney disease in Fiji.  And it’s not managed very well.  The G.P.’s here don’t understand the problem.  Uh, don’t … don’t treat it.  There are treatments that can certainly delay the progression of kidney failure if it’s picked up early.  They don’t screen people who are at risk.  And, uh, and because it’s traditionally been a terminal disease it’s got the same social stigma attached to it as cancer.  So people with kidney failure … their employees don’t want then to continue work.  They’d rather they were, you know, they left the job and did something else.  They have strange expectations that they’re going to have something … like a seizure while they’re at work, and — which would completely … just, just…  They show a lack of, um, understanding of the problem.  They don’t … they don’t, um, they don’t understand it as a treatable condition.  Um … they, they don’t understand that these people now have normal lives.  Particularly those who go off and get transplanted.  And we’ve arranged a program for that in India…people to go off, have transplants, and then come back to Fiji.  India’s cheap. Um … we … we … we picked it because it’s cheap.  Because they’ve got good laws about the transplantation of organs between people that protect against some of the more unscrupulous things that have happened in, uh, previous years.  The standard of service is very good.  And — but at the end of the day it’s just much more cost-effective to go there.  We can get a transplant in India between twenty and thirty thousand dollars Fijian and that includes the transport costs over there and back.  The cost of taking a kidney out of a donor, which must go with the patient and local … usually a compatible sibling, and, um, the medications and procedures for that first month or two, until they come back. In Australia or New Zealand, it might be a hundred-and-fifty-thousand dollars, so that’s a lot more money.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Joe Calarco (under supervision of David Nevell)

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): N/A

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): N/A

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY: N/A

COMMENTARY BY: N/A

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): N/A

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