Our remote healthcare heroes
Aug 11, 2021
4 minutes
WORDS by ROSANNE BARRETT
“I don’t see why we accept a lower standard of service for rural people’s health.”
– Ruth Stewart
Ruth Stewart Australia’s National Rural Health Commissioner
It was the day Professor Ruth Stewart was declared the next President of the Australian College of Rural and Remote Medicine. An announcement was going out to the media, her peers and the public that the bush doctor and regional health champion had been elected to lead her professional body. But on that day five years ago Ruth was receiving some life-changing news of her own. Sitting in a haematologist’s clinic in Melbourne, she was told the lump that had re-emerged in her neck was an aggressive lymphoma, requiring immediate treatment.
“This is really bad timing,” she told her specialist.
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