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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, First Session (54-1)
2019-04-03 Daily Xml
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Country Health Services

The Hon. T.A. FRANKS (14:48): Will this investment ensure that rape victims will not, as one woman recently had to do, travel from Port Lincoln to Whyalla and back just to have a rape kit done, and that the forensics are available locally in these regional and rural areas, not just the GPs or nurses trained in the appropriate responses?

The Hon. S.G. WADE (Minister for Health and Wellbeing) (14:48): Yarrow Place, which is a division within the Women's and Children's Health Network, a statewide service, and country health services are actively trying to recruit further health professionals, both nurses and doctors, to undertake training to be able to provide sexual assault examinations.

While I was in Port Pirie, I specifically discussed this issue. It is clearly adding to the trauma of sexual assault to put a woman—usually women—in a situation where she isn't able to take a shower and needs to be transported to Adelaide and have the trauma of the assault compounded by the trauma of being constrained to maintain the evidence. Of course, just in terms of time spent, my understanding would be that the forensic quality of the evidence would be poorer for the fact of the delay in taking it.

This is an issue that was raised with me in opposition. It's an issue that I have certainly been involved in discussions with in government. I am hopeful that as many health professionals as possible will take up this opportunity. To go directly to the honourable member's question, certainly it will expand the number of rural GPs. I hope that those rural GPs will also take the opportunity to take the additional training that is required to be able to undertake examinations.

Examinations are actually ordered by the police rather than by the health services, so I have limited transparency in terms of how many are done and how many people are required to move to the city, but we certainly know, both from people who need the examinations and from health professionals, that it is a significant issue of access to health for people in regional areas, and I know that health professionals in country South Australia and Yarrow Place are actively trying to address that issue.

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