Aboriginal Medical Service

The Aboriginal Medical Service (AMS) was established in Redfern from 1971. It was the first Aboriginal community controlled health service in Australia, and it is now a key Indigenous community organisation, from which most Aboriginal medical services around the State of New South Wales have stemmed. The AMS pioneered the concept of Aboriginal community-controlled health care, and as part of its broader objectives, the AMS aims to improve the health standards in Aboriginal communities across Australia.

The project had distinctly co-operative beginnings. Its foundation was led by Mum (Shirl) Smith, Ken Brindle and Chicka and Elsa Dixon. It was set up by Gordon Briscoe, Dr. Ferry Grundseit, the late Dr. Fred Hollows and Shirley Smith, who were all concerned with the serious health problems of Aboriginal Australians in Sydney. Its growth was encouraged by Redfern parish priest Fr Ted Kennedy.

The Sisters of Mercy donated the property in which the Aboriginal Medical Service had been established to the Redfern Aboriginal community in 1978. The service now provides medical, dental, aged care, drug and alcohol services to around 55,000 patients each year.

The modern centre was designed by Merrima company, and built on the donated land adjacent to the St Vincent's Roman Catholic community including the church, presbytery, convent and school built around 1887.

Famous quotes containing the words aboriginal, medical and/or service:

    John Eliot came to preach to the Podunks in 1657, translated the Bible into their language, but made little progress in aboriginal soul-saving. The Indians answered his pleas with: ‘No, you have taken away our lands, and now you wish to make us a race of slaves.’
    —Administration for the State of Con, U.S. public relief program. Connecticut: A Guide to Its Roads, Lore, and People (The WPA Guide to Connecticut)

    There may perhaps be a new generation of doctors horrified by lacerations, infections, women who have douched with kitchen cleanser. What an irony it would be if fanatics continued to kill and yet it was the apathy and silence of the medical profession that most wounded the ability to provide what is, after all, a medical procedure.
    Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)

    Civilization is a process in the service of Eros, whose purpose is to combine single human individuals, and after that families, then races, peoples and nations, into one great unity, the unity of mankind. Why this has to happen, we do not know; the work of Eros is precisely this.
    Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)