Demographics of Indian Immigrants in Australia
Discuss about the Impact of Migration and Acculturation on Prevalence.
This article is explaining the health issues relating to the Indian immigrants of Australia. Indians were primarily introduced in Australia in the early eighteen century. Many Indians come to Australia in search of a job opportunity or to study. During the nineteenth century, the number of immigrants in Australia increased in huge amount. The number of immigrants increases day by day. Data shows that during the time of 2011-12 the Indian immigrants became the largest source of the permanent migrants of Australia. The number suggested by the data is 15.7%. It is not justified to cover the total Indian immigrant population in this article so narrowing down the analysis of this article is mainly focusing on the Victoria. The number of Indian immigrants in Victoria is found to be 30,259. Among all the diseases that are prevalent in the population Type-2 diabetes is one of the most common disease. (Zheng et al.,2012). The following paragraphs will mainly focus on the demographic pattern of the health issues, the nature of the health issues found in the immigrants and the social determinants of health of immigrants of Victoria.
In the year 2006 census declared that there are 147,106 Indians who are residing in Australia are Indian by birth. Among them, 79,025 people have the citizenship for Australia. The main largest population of the Indian immigrants are mainly in new south whales consist of immigrants around 57,156. The second position is declared by the Victoria State with second largest demographic is of Indian immigrants with the number of 52,853 (Glover et al., 2015). One of the Indian immigrants declared themselves as, and some of them declared themselves as Sikh. The other immigrants are also found to Muslims and Christians. Data shows that at the end of the 2014 397,180 Indian people were living in Australia. The number seems to be doubled in every year. These factors make the Australian the fourth largest immigrant population of Australia, which is equivalent to the six per cent of Australian overseas-born population. Statistical data represents that the median age of the Indian immigrants is 33.2 years old, which is 4.1 years below the normal population (Morley et al., 2012). The birth numbers of males are astonishingly high than the female birth number approximately by fifty-four per cent with compare to forty-six per cent respectively.
Common Health Issues among Indian Immigrants
The Victoria state is noticed to the more than 1 in every four Victorians. The birth rate in Victoria reported being around twenty-six per cent which is now elevated to twenty-eight per cent every year. The Indian people here mostly more than sixty per cent is reported to be involved in religious affiliation. Among these most of the Indian immigrants perform Hinduism. In addition to this, the second largest groups are found to be Sikh. The census also reported explaining more than 6,64,473 extra people are found to be of the old age of around sixty-five to seventy-five years of age.
The most astonishing fact is that many Indian women usually believe that their pregnancy outcome is never under their control. They don’t try to know the nutrition facts. They are not enough educated about the lack of nutrition in their bodies and also in their children. These demographic categories are mainly youngsters. The young mothers are very small in age, many of them hardly capable of bearing any children. Most of the young mothers are aged around twenty to thirty. The cultural values of these Indian immigrants are different from the traditional Australian culture (Yeates et al., 2009). The Indian culture encourages the cold food intake during the pregnancy because they believe that hot food can generate heat which is not good for the foetus (Worthington & Gogne, 2013). In addition to this, it is also their belief that eating too much can result in a large foetus and that will eventually increase the difficulties during the labour. According to the cultural belief, that mother should eat hot foods during the last stages of the pregnancy in order to facilitate labour.
The life expectancy of people of India in Victoria is 66.5 years in which male is 65.5 years and female has 67.6 years compared to the other population in Victoria (Harper, 2012). There is a limited research on the health of Indian people in Victoria. Cancer rates are very high for the Indian Australians if it is compared to the other people of Australia. Researchers has showed that those people who are from the Indian origin has a high hazard of insulin resistance and eventually to the formation of Type-2 diabetes (Pottie et al., 2015).
Vitamin D deficiency is also common in the people of India and the cardio vascular rates are tremendously high to the people of India. Mental health care of the immigrant has emerged as one of the challenging areas for the doctors and the nurses. Among the people of India who were residing in Victoria for many years depression is one of the most common health hazards (Shahid & Thompson, 2009). Researchers while conducting a clinical assessment in the area of the population certain data were collected which shows that Indian women have a higher rates of suicide than that of the other women in Victoria.
Cultural Beliefs and Values and their Impact on Health
It is noted that most of the Indian people are smokers and alcohol addictive (Mossialos et al., 2016). Other health issues which are found in the Indian immigrants are the nutritional deficits, malaria, tuberculosis, sickle cell disease and the severe parasitic infections. There is no actual data for the mental stress for the people of India in Australia. Mental health is a very chronic disease when not controlled well then it can cause immense problem. The Australian Bureau of Statistics shows the data of causes of death in Indian populations in Australia. It is noted that diabetes is the third primary reason of death in India-born people and ninth for the Australia–born people (McHugh et al., 2013). National data also marks the number of standardised occurrence ratios for self–reported diabetes was considerably elevated than expected for men of South Asian origin than that of the men who were born in Australia. Therefore, it can be believed that diabetes will affect the wellbeing of a number of Indian migrant people.
Many Indian who lives in Victoria use Australian medicine for their betterment of health. Along with the medicines they use traditional practices on them (Badland et al., 2014). They have tremendous faith on the practices which they perform. The traditional practices and the spiritual practices includes Siddha, Ayurveda, Tibbi, Unani, homeopathy, acupressure and neuropathy.
The participation of family members in minor and the major medical decisions is critical for many Indian Australians. Lots of Indian Australian women, mainly elder Hindus, may desire to be examined by health professionals of same sex. Presence a female family member in presence when examining an older Hindu female is suggested as it may facilitate a more open communication.
Mental sickness has negative connotation, especially in Hindu inhabitants (Lipner, 2013). Some consider that mental sickness is due to of the evil eye. Since mental sickness is unrevealed, it is often expressed to a practitioner as somatic complaints like stomach pain or headache rather than as gloominess or nervousness.
WHO or the World Health Organisation perceives underestimation and encounters of bigotry as connected to the social determinants of health. Literate people in India are small, mainly for women. The rate is 61 per cent based on 2001 census. Literacy of men 73.4 per cent and women is 47.8 per cent. However, the population of Indian in Victoria have high level of edification when compared to the total Australian population. 97 per cent of men who were born in India and 92 per cent of India-born ladies reported that they can speak in English very well. Therefore the people from India want to settle in Victoria (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2012).
Traditional Medical Practices among Indian Immigrants
The weekly income of individual for India-born people in Victoria aged 15 years and over was $663, in comparison with $538 for people who are born overseas and $597 for all the people who were born in Victoria (Castañeda et al., 2015).
Residential environment- The residential environment has a influence on health through its impact on behaviour and safety and local resources. People and neighbourhoods that ensure access to basic services; are publicly cohesive; which endorse physical and psychological comfort; and defend the natural environment, are essential for health equity. Health-promoting in modern environments are those with suitable accommodation and transport and a mix of land use which encourages social gathering.
Employment and work- Unemployed people have a superior risk of death and have more sickness than those of same age who are employed. The mental stress caused by unemployment has a strong influence on physical and mental health and wellbeing. In some people, unemployment is caused by mental illness, but for many people it is unemployment itself that cause health hazards through its mental cost and the financial problems.
Conclusion
The conclusion can be drawn from the above mentioned article that the fourth largest community of the world for Indian immigrants in Australia. The number of Indian immigrants increases every year at a high rate. In Australia, the Victoria state holds the second largest immigrant population of Australia. Most of the Indians are, and they practice Hinduism and second most common found Indian religion in Australia is Sikh. There are many other communities like Muslims and Christians. The birth rate of the male Indians seems to be at the higher rate than the female birth rate. It was also found that the many of these Indians are against the technological health care of Australia they rather like to use their traditional herbs and Ayurveda. There are health issues, and problems face by this Indian immigrant community because of their cultural beliefs and values. It was found that they seem to have lack of information about the birth control and nutrition fact during their pregnancy.
References
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