In Australia, the push for chiropractic services in our Medicare scheme, while not on the current government's agenda, has been put to the current minister of health. These meetings have been positive and now the CAA has good contacts with the minister and her advisors. The opposition party's shadow minister of health is opposed to the recognition of chiropractic services within the public health system. She maintains that chiropractic's best interest lies through the "extension of services within private health care." A government supported, publicly funded chiropractic initiative is currently being positively explored with ministerial support and the department of health's assistance. More of this proposal will be detailed in following articles.
Sports chiropractic in Australia has achieved many successes, but now Australia's two chiropractic schools, RMIT (Melbourne) and Macquarie University Centre of Chiropractic, offer chiropractors the chance to have qualifications in graduate diplomate and master's of chiropractic sports science. The course at Macquarie University run by Dr. Henry Pollard has currently eight chiropractors doing the course.
Dr. Noel Patterson has been the chiropractor for the last three Commonwealth Games for Australia. Dr. Patterson, past president of the Federation Internationale de Chiropratique Sportive, has been a great spokesperson for sports chiropractic in Australia. Despite his efforts, the Australia Sports Medicine Federation (ASMF) did not allow chiropractors to treat the Australian athletes at the Barcelona Olympics. With Dr. Patterson's persistence and the fact that now Australia will have university graduates getting their degrees in sports chiropractic, the ASMF should allow chiropractors to be a part of future Olympic teams. We hope this will happen for the 1996 games in Atlanta. This would give sports chiropractic a good foothold when Sydney hosts the 2000 Olympic Games.
Note: We were very pleased to have had Dr. Keith Innes, Dean of MPI faculty, Down Under for a seminar February 18-19. He'll return later this year, August 12-13 and August 19-20 for more seminars.
Please look for our articles in upcoming issues of "DC."
George Dragasevich, DC, BSc
Orazio Trevisan, DC, BSc