Our Remote Healthcare Heroes

The further you live from a big city in Australia, the tougher it is to get the healthcare you need, but it doesn’t have to be that way. The Weekly meets inspiring women bringing healing to the bush.

- Rosanne Barrett

Ruth Stewart Australia’s National Rural Health Commissioner

It was the day Professor Ruth Stewart was declared the next President of the Australian College of Rural and Remote Medicine. An announcement was going out to the media, her peers, and the public that the bush doctor and regional health champion had been elected to lead her professional body. But on that day five years ago Ruth was receiving some life-changing news of her own. Sitting in a hematologist’s clinic in Melbourne, she was told the lump that had re-emerged in her neck was an aggressive lymphoma, requiring immediate treatment.

“This is really bad timing,” she told her specialist. He replied: “I don’t care, you’re starting chemotherapy tomorrow.” This kicked off a medical program that saw Ruth experience the best in regional healthcare, including chemotherapy from her home on remote Thursday Island in the Torres Strait.

Now Australia’s National Rural Health Commissioner, Ruth has lived experience of medicine outside cities as both doctor and patient, from the bush to the tropics. “I already had a passion for rural healthcare,” she tells The Weekly. “I’d always been conscious of the challenges.”