Community Profile

The Emergency Department (ED) of the Lyell McEwin Health Service is well utilised by the surrounding community, with 42 269 attendances during the 1997/98 year.

Factors contributing to the high demand for ED services include the lack of GP services, demographic factors and the significant proportion of minority groups.

The Northern region has:

	the least number of GP’s per resident in the metropolitan area.
	a significant proportion of socio-economic disadvantaged persons with a higher than average unemployment for South Australia and a high number of single parent families
	other groups with different needs in terms of health care including the Aboriginal population and persons from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds. The Northern area houses 44% of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islands (TSI) people of the metropolitan region. This constitutes 20.3% of the Aboriginal and TSI population of SA.
	the most rapid growth of people from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds. There is a large population of Southern Europeans living in this area. In recent years increasing numbers of South East Asians have also moved to areas of inexpensive housing in Salisbury, Munno Para and Virginia.

to turn the page click here