The Wire

When Dr Buddhi Lokuga was employed to roll out a ‘Farewell Scabies’ program in the NT he quickly found local resistance to the plan to dose thousands of people with the drug Invermectin. Instead he took Elders’ advice of ‘yaka gana’ or ‘walk with me’ and worked with key families on the health issues surrounding scabies outbreaks.

As part of the program washing machines were purchased for the communities and a maintenance program put in place so the machines could be kept in  working order. It was a slower approach to health delivery but he says much more effective in the long run as  people learned to trust him and his team.