Tens of thousands train in contact tracing for the bush

More than 50,000 people have accessed specialised pandemic training for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health workers and health practitioners to help protect remote Australian communities from coronavirus outbreaks. The five online modules, developed by a team at The Australian National University (ANU), include training on how to conduct contact tracing within remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. The training was developed following a request from the National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation (NACCHO) and the Australian Government.  "We can't eliminate COVID-19 without a vaccination, but we can reduce the impact of disease by ensuring we have a skilled workforce who can respond quickly to outbreaks and areas of community transmission," Ms Alyson Wright, an epidemiologist from the ANU Research School of Population Health who co-ordinated the development of the modules, said.  "Contact tracing in remote Indigenous communities is likely to look very different to how we usually do it in the city or urban areas.   "There are language and cultural differences to consider, and in some places, there is a lack of telecommunications.   "Overcrowding in housing and poor condition of houses will mean that COVID-19 spreads extremely quickly in these communities. To keep communities safe, we must act quickly and to do that we need to use local Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people who have the cultural knowledge and skills to isolate cases and find contacts," Ms Wright said.