Good Weekend's Who Mattered 2019: Health

Joe Ibrahim: the geriatric medicine specialist exposing the "astonishing" truth behind some nursing-home deaths. Plus: David Caldicott and Wendy McCarthy.

Joe Ibrahim

The star of this year’s aged care royal commission was not a forceful figure from the law, nor a strident voice of business, nor even an impassioned citizen. He was a specialist in geriatric medicine who’s toiled for years, within a small unit at Monash University, compiling a suite of confronting statistics about the terrible ways in which some people die in nursing homes. “Professor Joe Ibrahim has been beating his head against a brick wall trying to get this crucial work noticed,” says The Sydney Morning Herald health editor Kate Aubusson. “He gave evidence to the commission and it’s bracing stuff. He knows the death rates in aged care. He knows what’s causing them. He knows they’re under-reported. And he knows that not enough is being done to stop them.”

Ibrahim found that roughly one in six nursing home deaths between 2000 and 2014 was “unnatural” – due not to old age but to incidents such as falls, choking and suicide – and, in some cases, due to assault by a fellow patient with a cognitive impairment. “There’s a loophole that means the facility operator doesn’t have to report the abuse to police or government authorities,” says Aubusson. “It’s astonishing.”

Ibrahim also works beyond the numbers, treating patients of his own, making them aware of the system in which they live. Forewarned is forearmed. “What he’s up against is death – the great silencer – but he also stares down this complex tangle of bureaucracy. He’s really trying to grapple with this fundamental question that we still haven’t answered: about how we want to live out the last years of our lives.”

David Caldicott

The face of one of the most controversial issues of the year – pill testing as a harm-reduction measure at music festivals – has been the Irish-raised, Canberra-based emergency medicine specialist David Caldicott. A lecturer at the Australian National University, Caldicott has been arguing for years that pill testing has the potential to change behaviour and save young lives. He gained some traction last year as the figurehead for a trial held at the Groovin’ the Moo festival in the ACT; the trial was successful enough to return this year, when organisers say demand for the service more than doubled.

“He’s been at the vanguard of the whole debate longer than most people,” says The Sydney Morning Herald reporter Angus Thompson, who has followed the issue all year. “Given the sad spate of drug deaths at recent music festivals, the debate has been inflamed. People have been looking for a clear-headed explanation and he’s taken that on willingly. It’s his life calling, really.”

Caldicott’s stance was bolstered in October when NSW deputy coroner Harriet Grahame, who had investigated the drug-related deaths of six young people at music festivals between December 2017 and January 2019, also recommended testing pills for toxic substances. The NSW and Victorian governments remain firmly against it, and NSW Police Commissioner Mick Fuller has backed his premier in arguing that anything that encourages illicit drug use and suggests it could be safe is gravely concerning. But the Victorian ambulance union has argued for a limited scheme in that state, and the debate continues.

“David would say that he doesn’t have all the answers, but he has more than many,” says Thompson. “He’s amiable. He’s a great conversationalist. He’s a perfect intersection between scientist and communicator, explaining difficult concepts in a digestible way. And he’s able to sell things, which, given the important harm-minimisation and decriminalisation conversations we’re having now, is valuable. He’s an advocate.”

Wendy McCarthy

You might think this 78-year-old feminist had done her most important work decades ago. But after helping Kerryn Phelps win Malcolm Turnbull’s former seat of Wentworth last year, as her campaign chair – even if Phelps lost it back to the Liberals in the May federal election – Wendy McCarthy, teacher, writer, executive, activist, became the face of the movement to drag NSW’s archaic abortion laws into the 21st century.

And who better to do so? McCarthy, who chairs the NSW Pro-Choice Alliance, was famously one of 80 women who included their names in a full-page newspaper advertisement in the early 1970s, acknowledging that they had illegally terminated pregnancies. (McCarthy’s own covert abortion came in 1963, and cost 63 guineas.) She could not have imagined the issue would still require warriors more than half a century later.

“In September this year, NSW finally overturned its 119-year-old abortion laws, but the foundation for this historic moment was cemented in the early 1970s,” says the editor of The Sydney Morning Herald, Lisa Davies. “McCarthy led the campaign effort for this bill, working tirelessly to convince MPs of its merits. Her persuasive lobbying was instrumental in achieving this historic moment.”

In fact, on the eve of the NSW bill’s presentation to parliament, 60 Sydney women launched a social media movement daring police to arrest them for having had illegal abortions. “The 2019 #ArrestUs Facebook page was a hat-tip to the 80 women led by McCarthy all those years ago,” says Davies. “Imitation really is the sincerest form of flattery.”

With the support of a younger brigade of advocates, the legislation McCarthy had been hoping for all those years ago finally got through. “McCarthy’s advocacy and passion for women’s rights has spurred a new generation,” says Davies. “We wouldn’t be where we are without her.”

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