Auntie, Sister. Grandmother, Great-Grandmother,
Mother and Wife of German Descent
I've lived in Australia since 1959 together with my husband Peter. We have four children, eight grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. I started blogging because I wanted to publish some of my childhood memories. I am blogging now also some of my other memories. I like to publish some photos too as well as a little bit of a diary from the present time. Occasionally I publish a story with a bit of fiction in it. Peter, my husband, is publishing some of his stories under berlioz1935.wordpress.com
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky addresses the nation in Kyiv on Feb. 25. (Handout/AFP/Getty Images)
A video of a duo singing “Endless Love,” the 1981 song by Lionel Richie and Diana Ross, identified the singers as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his wife, Olena Zelenska. It immediately went viral.
If something seems too good to be true, it probably is. PolitiFact correctly identified the singers as Alejandro Manzano of the band Boyce Avenue and Connie Talbot, an English singer.
On the phone with my sister, who had sent me the link, we both admitted we wanted it to be real, if only because it fit the narrative that Zelensky, an entertainer before becoming a politician, could do anything. To a world long starved of a hero, the Ukrainian president reminded us of the power of unyielding courage in the face of overwhelming odds.
Maybe part of our infatuation is that so few expected so much from Zelensky. Before becoming akin to Superman, he was a television personality and comedian — a funny guy. But signs of backbone were also plain to see: Zelensky had already proved himself to be a stand-up guy when then-President Donald Trump asked him to investigate Joe Biden, and his son Hunter, as the 2020 campaign approached.
A week before the call, Trump had frozen almost $400 million in military aid for Ukraine. Trump was running a squeeze play: Get me some dirt on Biden, he told Zelensky, and Ukraine can have its weapons. This improper hostage-taking of funds for personal political gain resulted in Trump’s first impeachment trial.
Note: Zelensky never did investigate the Bidens, a decision that must seem providential in retrospect.
In the present context, such gambits now seem almost quaint. Nearly three weeks into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the 44-year-old Zelensky is Russia’s No. 1 target. Tuesday, as Zelensky likely was preparing for a scheduled virtual address to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday, Olena Zelenska posted online: “Like all wives in Ukraine, I’m afraid for my husband’s life.”
Zelensky long ago mastered the art of simultaneously taunting Putin and inspiring the world. In one recent gibe, Zelensky showcased a photo of an apparent Russian missile fragment, found near his residence in Kyiv. “Missed,” Zelensky said to Moscow.
While requesting a meeting with Putin on March 3, Zelensky said, “I don’t bite. What are you afraid of?”
Citing Putin’s curious habit of sitting at the end of extremely long tables during meetings with aides, Zelensky said, “Sit down with me to negotiate, just not at 30 meters.”
Nina Khrushcheva, great-granddaughter of former Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev and a professor of foreign affairs at Manhattan’s New School, told me recently that she believes Putin puts himself at the end of long conference tables to avoid being physically compared with other men. She also briefly considered the possibility that Zelensky had hired a public relations firm to help sharpen his mordant trolling of the Russian president.
“I thought he had hired a PR agent because it was so well choreographed,” she said.
But then, Zelensky is a comedic actor, an art that is serving him well. If he’s fearful, he doesn’t show it as he walks the shell-shocked streets of Kyiv. He has made clear he won’t leave Ukraine, inspiring his fellow Ukrainians to stand and fight. Equal parts Sam Elliott, Stephen Colbert and, in the romantic fantasies of at least two gullible sisters, a crooner, Zelensky has gone a long way toward redefining manhood in a time of gender muddle and animus toward men.
He is the modern-day warrior-artist — political and presidential, fearless and faithful, humble yet cocky, beautiful in his ordinariness. An Everyman in his trademark T-shirt and half-zip, Zelensky is David against Goliath, shouting to the world that he’s not afraid. We are riveted because this bird is so seldom seen.
Art and war have been companions through the centuries, but it’s rare to discover someone who combines the spirit of both disciplines. Zelensky has reminded us that a warrior’s strength isn’t measured in missiles; and that an artist’s soul (along with sharp wit) guards freedom as much as the point of a spear.
The best men in history have understood these imperatives and rallied others as their time commanded. Zelensky was made for this role in this moment. Bravo.
Opinion by Kathleen ParkerKathleen Parker writes a twice-weekly column on politics and culture. She received the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 2010. Twitter
Posted Tue 5 Feb 2019 at 6:00amTuesday 5 Feb 2019 at 6:00am, updated Wed 6 Feb 2019 at 12:44pmWednesday 6 Feb 2019 at 12:44pm
5 Feb 2019 at 6:00amTuesday 5 Feb 2019 at 6:00am, updated Wed 6 Feb 2019 at 12:44pmWednesday 6 Feb 2019 at 12:44pm
The IQ test is held in high regard — but is it a genuine measure of intelligence?(Getty Images: Chris Ryan)
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For over 100 years, the intelligence quotient (IQ) test has been considered the quintessential marker of who is “smart” and who is not.
But a dip in IQ scores worldwide has researchers questioning if it’s time to broaden how we understand intelligence.
“My particular theory is that scores really haven’t gone backwards, but the IQ test hasn’t kept up with the way we’re using our brains,” says Tony Florio, a clinical psychologist and senior lecturer at the University of NSW.
He argues the test measures only a certain kind of intelligence, and is therefore of limited use.
Tony Florio is a clinical psychologist who specialises in IQ, but he believes the test doesn’t measure everything.(ABC RN: Farz Edraki)
Dr Florio suggests that the IQ test might help us see who will be successful in a traditional school system, which was its original purpose, but that it is not the be all and end all about who’s smart and who isn’t.
Dr Florio has studied the test for decades and says a typical IQ test is divided into ten subsets including vocabulary, general knowledge and problem solving.
In Australia, he says, these tests are conducted by psychologists either clinically, in schools or very occassionally for organisational psychology testing — for example when selecting members for executive committees.
An IQ score of a 100 is considered a score of average intelligence, 130 and above is defined as gifted, and a person scoring below 70 is interpreted as having an intellectual disability.
Not the first time the test has been criticised
Dr Florio has several criticisms about the breadth of the IQ test, which, he says, measures linguistic and logical-mathematical abilities and not motivation, personality or creativity.
“It’s gone down a narrow pathway,” he says.
He’s not alone in criticising the test.
He says there has been a perennial debate about whether there is one general intelligence.
Is there more to being smart than IQ?
Dr Florio argues that the IQ test doesn’t necessarily accommodate that “individuals are complicated with many aspects to them” — pointing to similar concerns raised by the test’s very founder.
He explains that French psychologist Alfred Binet, who developed the IQ test over 100 years ago, feared the test — initially designed to help measure the ‘mental age’ of a child — could be too limited.
Binet stressed that intelligence was far too broad a concept to quantify with a single number; however, he designed the test as a way to help identify children with learning difficulties.
France was the first country to introduce universal education and needed to work out who would struggle with learning and might need extra help, Dr Florio explains.
He says it’s much easier to compare people as children because there are different educational milestones that they reach at different ages.
If children were reaching them at a younger age they were seen as gifted and if they were reaching them later they were seen as delayed.
In 1916, Dr Florio highlights, an American psychologist adapted the IQ test for use in the US Army and since then the test has been adopted by many institutions other than schools.
The impact of the ‘Google effect’
Since the test first began in 1906 there has been, until recently, a steady increase in IQ score test resultsworldwide,a trend dubbed ‘the Flynn Effect’.
Dr Florio says factors that led to the Flynn Effect were improved nutrition and maternal health, and increasing access to education.
Even the reduction in the average size of families was a contributing factor, says Dr Florio, as “there’s less children per family so more attention per child”.
Now, however, Dr Florio says research shows a decline in scores occurring specifically throughout Europe where most of the relevant research has been conducted, and this is being branded the ‘reverse Flynn Effect’.
Research seems to suggest that worldwide our IQ scores in developed countries have been dropping over the last decade, Dr Florio says.
Davina Bell is a children’s author whose most recent book is called ‘All the Ways to be Smart’.(ABC RN: Fiona Pepper)
“You’d think logically that it should’ve just plateaued but it seems to have in fact gone backwards.”
According to Dr Florio, there are several theories to explain this.
“There’s a theory that’s been dubbed the ‘Google effect’,” he says.
“Because we now outsource a lot of things like our memory and doing cognitive tasks to machines, we don’t develop general knowledge retention which is something that is measured on IQ tests.”
Dr Florio says another explanation could be “that we can’t improve forever”.
But do the decreasing results point to a decreasing intelligence?
Dr Florio isn’t convinced.
He says it may be that it’s not useful to have that kind of general knowledge memory any more, which means that the IQ test as we understand it may need to change.
More than one way to be ‘smart’
Children’s book author Davina Bell, who has researched alternative approaches to intelligence, sits firmly in the camp that argues there is more than one way to be intelligent.
She says she has long felt that creative pursuits were undervalued in traditional intelligence tests, an idea she’s explored in her latest children’s book, All the Ways to be Smart.
Davina aimed to create a children’s book that celebrates all the many ways someone can be ‘smart’.(Supplied: Allison Colpoys)
While researching for this book, Bell discovered the work of Harvard psychologist Howard Gardener and his theory of Multiple Intelligences.
“Gardener said that rather than seeing intelligence as dominated by a single general ability we should see it as a series of modalities or abilities,” Bell says.
Gardener describes nine categories to measure intelligence, including bodily-kinesthetic intelligence, such as good hand-eye coordination, interpersonal intelligence, such as the ability to effectively communicate,and musical intelligence.
Bell wanted to create a book that honoured all nine ‘ways of being smart’, for example being ‘smart’ at drawing, interacting with others or being physically coordinated.
“The book offers a kind of validation,” Bell says.
“If you weren’t a traditionally smart person or if you had intelligence in other areas that perhaps weren’t recognised, maybe it provides a validation of your identity outside those traditional intelligences,” she says.
Dr Florio supports Gardener’s broader approach to intelligence, but says the academic community’s response to Gardener’s theory is mixed.
Bell’s book highlights creativity as one of the nine ways of being smart.(Supplied: Allison Colpoys)
“I think Gardener’s theories are valid, there are lots and lots of other abilities,” Dr Florio says.
Although Dr Florio explains Gardener’s critics say his definition cannot be quantified and in the academic community some say it is not backed up by enough data.
Dr Florio believes there still is a place for the traditional IQ test when it comes to diagnosing conditions like autism, dyslexia and intellectual disabilities.
But, like Bell, he sees approaches like Gardener’s as offering a broader and more modern understanding of intelligence.
“Gardener was pointing out the limitations of the IQ test and the problems of focusing on one aspect. We are complex individuals,” he says.
I enjoyed this easy to breathe air without any moisture in it! 🙂
A bit before 2 PM a walked over to the Club. I spent there about
an hour sitting in nice surroundings. It was a quiet day at the Club.
Not many people go to the Club on Monday or Tuesday, for these are the days when the Bistro stays closed: So, no food is available on these days.
I liked to sit there for two hours in the afternoon with only a couple of drinks: First I had some cappuccino, and after about one hour I had a glass of chilled Riesling. 🙂
As a member of the Club, I paid only 4 Dollars for each drink! 🙂
While sitting there, I looked into one of my books from the Dapto Library:
A cute little book about Paris with beautiful photos on every page! 🙂
This booklet is called “Quiet Paris” and has 142 pages. 🙂
So that you may get an idea, what these pages are about, I copy, what it says about the content:
(Introduction, with no pictures, starts on page 6)
Museums starts on page 10
Libraries starts on page 22
Parks and Gardens starts on page 32
Places to relax 52
Places of Worship 62
Shops 72
Restaurants 88
Cafes 100
Bookshops 110
Galleries 122
Cultural Centres 130
Places to stay 136
Paris is such a beautiful city! 🙂
I have been there for a week in 1954 as a 19-year-old, and
absolutely loved then my time in Paris! 🤩
I loved it again 36 years later in 1990, when I was there with
“We owe it to ourselves and to the next generation to conserve the environment so that we can bequeath our children a sustainable world that benefits all.” ~ Wangari Maathai[1].
COVID-19 has presented an opportunity for a positive response to the environmental challenge we are facing. The recovery effort will necessitate considerable stimulus investment. If that investment is made in an environmentally friendly manner, such as sustainable solar and wind power generation rather than in bailing out carbon-based corporations, it can be a win for everyone. Otherwise, it will set us on a pathway to environmental catastrophe.
Unfortunately, Donald Trump saw it differently voicing his “1,000 percent” support of the oil and gas industry[2] setting the U.S. back by considerably more than just his four years in office. Historically, recessions are typically followed by sharp rebounds in emissions, hopefully, this time…
I think, it is not hard to understand, that from the Russians point of view, it is of the utmost importance, that they create all around Russia sufficient buffer zones in order to secure Russian borders as much as possible.
They are very powerful country now! This gives them the means for securing all their borders!
I think they are not out for any wars: They just want to b e able to keep securing all their borders!
All people, that study history objectively, should find it obvious, why the Russians, with Putin as their leader, right now act the way they do!
Hasn’t the West fed them lie upon lie? I don’t see, why they should have any reason to trust us!
Volodymyr Zelensky meets with Bernard-Henri Levy, 2019COURTESY THE AUTHOR
Idon’t know if, by the time this article appears, Volodymyr Zelensky will still be alive.
We do know that he is in Kyiv, surrounded by his generals, in a bunker that the Sukhoi fighter jets seek.
And we have just seen him in a video where he appears helmetless, outside, like a young Churchill walking in the poor neighborhoods of London during the Nazi Blitz of September 1940.
But I also know that he is at the top of the Kremlin’s kill list, according to the English-language press.
His recent farewells come to mind—on Friday, Feb. 25, to his counterparts over Zoom during a special meeting of the European Union: “This is maybe the last time that you will see me alive.”
What is greatness?
True greatness, as taught by European chivalry?
Perhaps it is that.
That heroism, calm and proud.
A touch of Allende the night before the assault of the Moneda by Pinochet’s death squads.
The way he told President Biden, who offered up an exfiltration—“I need weapons, not a taxi”—and Putin, today’s Pinochet: “You can try to kill me, I am ready for it, since I know that the idea lives in me and will survive me.”
The first time I met him was on March 30, 2019, the night before the first round of his stunning election, in a seafood restaurant near the Maidan.
I had just performed, at the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Looking for Europe, the theatrical monologue that I was bringing then to the European capitals. My friend Vladislav Davidzon, one of the last American journalists still in Ukraine—reporting for Tablet—had arranged the meeting.
Volodymyr Zelensky was, at the time, a very young man. Looking like a paper boy in jeans, old sneakers, and a black T-shirt with a worn neckline, he had spent the night celebrating the final performance, in an old Kyiv skating rink turned café-theater, of “Servant of the People,” the one-man show that had made him famous.
We talked about Beppe Grillo, that other cabaret actor, and founder of the Five Star movement in Italy, whom Zelensky hated being compared to.
About French Coluche, whose story he didn’t know well and whose final pirouette, a decision to retire from the presidential election, he did not quite understand: “Maybe because there was now a great man in France, François Mitterrand, so his service was no longer needed?”
About Ronald Reagan, by contrast, he knew everything; hadn’t he just done—for the Ukrainian TV channel 1+1, which belongs to the Israeli-Ukrainian Igor Kolomoyskyi, Zelensky’s sponsor—the voice-over for a docudrama on the destiny of this actor in bad Westerns who became a great president?
We also spoke about Putin, the other Vladimir, about whom he had no doubt: If he would come face to face, he would make Putin laugh, just as he had made all Russians laugh. “I act in the Russian language, you know; the kids love me, in Moscow; they double over with laughter at my sketches; the only thing is …”
He hesitated …
Then, over the table, in a low voice: “There is one thing … this man does not see; he has eyes, but does not see; or, if he does look, it’s with an icy stare, devoid of all expression.”
The other subject of our conversation was his Judaism.
How could a young Jew, born into a family decimated by the Shoah, in the oblast of Dnipropetrovsk, become president of the country of Babi Yar?
It’s simple, he answered, with a hoarse laugh: “There is less antisemitism in Ukraine than in France; and, above all, less than in Russia where, hunting for the Nazi mote in thy brother’s eye, they end up missing the beam in thine own eye; wasn’t it Ukrainian units of the Red Army that liberated Auschwitz, after all?”
Our second meeting took place at the annual Yalta European Strategy conference, the Ukrainian mini-Davos created by the philanthropist Victor Pinchuk.
Like every year, there were distinguished geopoliticians, American officials, NATO representatives, acting or former European heads of state, and intellectuals.
Zelensky, now president, gave a strong speech in which he laid out his plan for combatting corruption, the scourge of his country’s economy.
The time came for the traditional closing dinner, where the host would, over pears and cheese, offer a “surprise” to anchor the event: one year, Donald Trump, candidate … another, Elton John or Stephen Hawking …
This time the surprise, arriving on the stage, in front of the tables, is the troupe of actors who had performed with the new head of state, up to his election.
One does an impersonation of Angela Merkel.
Another plays a supposed WhatsApp exchange, hilarious and salacious, between Trump and Hillary Clinton.
And here was a third, made up like Zelensky, playing a rustic Ukrainian who speaks poor English searching for someone to interpret for him and pointing, as if by chance, at the real Zelensky, who without being asked twice, bounds out of his chair to join his comrades on stage.
That was the situation.
A fake Zelensky, playing the real one.
The real Zelensky, playing the interpreter of the fake.
The fake, translated by the real, offers up howlers that the other is forced to translate, which make fun of him.
In short, an incredible show.
The room, faced with this quid pro quo, this joyful blurring of original and copy, faced with the self-effacement of a president swallowed by his avatar, hesitates among laughter, uneasiness, and amazement.
That night, Zelensky was Woody Allen inviting us, like in The Purple Rose of Cairo, into his film, or, better, into his TV series.
When the show was over, I went to ask him what Putin, in Moscow, might think of this enemy disappearing behind his mask and allowing himself to be silent within his simulacrum. He told me this: “It’s true! The attitude is surely unheard of in the main repertoire of the FSB! But laughter is a weapon that is fatal to men of marble! You shall see.”
We met again, once more, last year.
I was coming back from reporting in the Donbas, where I had run the front lines from Mariupol to Luhansk, with elite troops of the new Ukrainian army. And while my photographers, Marc Roussel and Gilles Hertzog, had laid out some of their best shots on the coffee table in the room where we were being received, a whole other Zelensky revealed himself.
In one of the photos, taken at Novotroitske, Zelensky recognized Major General Viktor Ganushchak, the leader of the 10th Battalion of the Alpine Chasers brigade, mildly paunchy in a chicane jacket straight out of frozen Verdun.
About another photo, taken in the Myroliubovka zone, near Donetsk, he commented to Andriy Yermak, his close adviser, to his right, on the vulnerability of three 155 mm cannons, positioned like prehistoric iron monsters in the middle of a field.
About a third, taken near Donetsk, on a gutted road in the ghost town Pisky, he knew the exact number of brave souls who, dug into the mud and snow, held the line.
And then, in Zolote, not far from Luhansk, in a maze of trenches made from an assembly of planks planted in the black earth, he knew by name, having just inspected them, most of the overequipped Rambos, their faces muddy or hooded, who stood guard every 30 feet and seemed hypnotized by the no man’s land before them.
Did Volodymyr Zelensky already know, on that day, that Putin had decided he’d had enough of the Ukrainian democratic exception, and of his clowning?
Did he understand that he would never, after all, laugh with the cold-eyed man with an assassin’s soul?
At that moment, things became clear.
I understood that this former artist of the LOL and the stand-up, whose true nature I thought I had found at the gala dinner in Kyiv, had transformed himself into a warrior.
I saw him join the exemplary company of the men and women that I’d revered my whole life—from republican Spain to Sarajevo and Kurdistan—who are not made for the part that befalls them, but who take it up with panache and learn to make war without loving it.
And in his silhouette grown heavier, on his features once young like French republican drummer boy Francois Joseph Bara, now resembling the French revolutionary Georges Danton, I saw the resistance fighter whose courage amazes the world today.
This man prefers to die fighting than to suffer the dishonor of forced surrender.
The Forum of Young Global Leaders, or Young Global Leaders (YGL), was created by Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum. It is a non-profit organization managed from Geneva, Switzerland, under the supervision of the Swiss government.
The program was founded by Klaus Schwab of the World Economic Forum in 1993 under the name “Global Leaders for Tomorrow” and was renamed to Young Global Leaders in 2004.[1]
Schwab created the group with $1 million won from the Dan David Prize,[2] and the inaugural 2005 class comprised 237 young leaders.
People recognized as a Young Global Leader are allowed to attend one meeting of the World Economic Forum for free.[3]
Reception
BusinessWeek‘s Bruce Nussbaum describes the Young Global Leaders as “the most exclusive private social network in the world”,[4] while the organization itself describes the selected leaders as representing “the voice for the future and the hopes of the next generation”.
Denise Booth tends to her sister’s grave every evening before the sun goes down.
“We miss her,” Denise says quietly.
“Miss her ways. And her smiles and that.”
WARNING: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that this article contains images of a person who has died, used with the permission of their family.
So many graves in Doomadgee cemetery belong to young people like Yvette “Betty” Booth.
Just two months before she died, the teenager was diagnosed with an illness that has all but disappeared in most of Australia.
Betty (centre) was just 18 years old when she died.(Supplied/Four Corners: Nick Wiggins)
Denise has the illness too. It’s called rheumatic heart disease (RHD).
Betty was supposed to get weekly check-ups and urgent surgery, but that never happened.
She visited Doomadgee Hospital’s emergency department 12 times in under two months.
On some of those occasions, she was given Panadol through a security grate and sent away.
Her family is heartbroken and angry.
Denise Booth at her sister’s grave.(Four Corners: Louie Eroglu ACS)
“We are human beings, you know?” says Betty’s uncle, Martin Evans.
“We want to get the same treatment as the next person.
“What happened at that hospital — it’s just not right.”
Betty’s death is one of three in the space of a year uncovered by Four Corners in an investigation into health care in this remote town.
Diagnosis
When doctor Bo Remenyi visited Doomadgee in July 2019 to screen children for RHD, she recognised Betty Booth and her family right away.
Dr Remenyi started her medical career in the remote north-west Queensland town and the plight of RHD patients had inspired her to specialise in paediatric cardiology.
She had treated Betty as a baby 18 years earlier and even babysat her.
When she examined Betty, now aged 18, Dr Remenyi quickly realised Betty had severe RHD.
Doctor Bo Remenyi (centre) with Betty and her mother Norma Mick.(Supplied/Four Corners: Nick Wiggins)
Betty needed urgent surgery to repair the valves in her heart.
Dr Remenyi’s team left detailed instructions for her care and multiple health bodies — including Doomadgee Hospital’s doctors and director of nursing — were emailed Betty’s referral to a cardiology service.
Despite this, no record of her illness was kept on Doomadgee Hospital’s file.
Betty was supposed to be reviewed weekly, but that never happened.
‘The shut-up pill’
Betty first went to the hospital four days after her diagnosis, at 11pm with a cough, fever and vomiting.
She was given Panadol and treatment for dehydration and sent home to return in daylight hours.
On that occasion, staff took her temperature and pulse, but that wouldn’t always be the case.
Dr Remenyi says it’s not unusual for patients who go to the hospital on weekends and after hours not to be properly assessed.
“The conversation takes place over a cage, without actually touching the patient or examining the patient or giving that real opportunity to discuss the symptoms,” she says.
Betty would go on to visit the emergency department 12 times, with symptoms including difficulty breathing, fever, an abnormally high heart rate, and coughing up blood.
But she was given paracetamol (and once, antibiotics) – often handed through the locked after-hours security window – and sent away.
Betty went to the hospital several times with symptoms like coughing up blood and difficulty breathing.(Four Corners: Louie Eroglu ACS, Nick Wiggins)
On some of these occasions, hospital staff did not carry out basic vital signs observations that are routine in other hospitals – taking temperature, pulse, oxygen saturations.
“How many times can you present, with the same symptoms, pressing symptoms, coughing up blood, shortness of breath, tachycardia, and each time the outcome is not different?” Dr Remenyi says.
She says Betty’s care represents “clearly, a failure of the health system”.
An independent review of Betty’s care would later say, “generally patients do not present in the middle of the night for no reason, and it is rare for them to present frequently at that time”.
Vicki Wade, director of lobby group RHD Australia, says the use of paracetamol in this way is disappointingly widespread in remote Aboriginal communities.
“We know that it’s not the right treatment, but unfortunately, Panadol’s easy to give out, so you know, people will get the Panadol and we’ll say, ‘oh, that’s the shut-up pill’,” she says.
Four Corners investigates how the health system has failed women like Betty, tonight on ABC TV and iview.
‘They are supposed to be professionals’
After multiple presentations to Doomadgee Hospital in August 2019, Betty went to Townsville, where her mother was having an operation.
Townsville Hospital was also aware of Betty’s diagnosis and while there was toing and froing between medical services and Betty to try to set a date for her surgery, it never happened.
When Betty returned to Doomadgee after three weeks, she fell desperately ill again.
Marilyn Haala, a relative who was staying at Betty’s house that weekend, noticed Betty’s face and neck were “all swollen”. Swelling can be a serious warning sign of heart failure.
“She was sick, she just kept coughing — she didn’t look good,” Ms Haala says.
“She was struggling to breathe.”
Marilyn Haala encouraged Betty to go to the hospital.(Four Corners: Louie Eroglu ACS)
The family decided Betty should go to the hospital, but when Betty’s sister took her to the emergency department, her family says she was again sent home with Panadol.
“An 18-year-old girl should not be sent home with Panadol,” Mr Evans says.
“They are supposed to be the professionals, check her file for goodness sake.”
Weenie George, the mother of Betty’s best friend, says this practice was commonplace at the hospital.
“They don’t treat them and check them,” Ms George says.
“They just send them home. They don’t do their job at night.”
Monday, September 23
Weenie’s husband Terrence and daughter Shakaya both had rheumatic heart disease, so when Betty turned up to their house, they knew the signs of a very unwell patient.
“She was looking a bit puffy in the face. She was breathless talking to me and Terrence,” Weenie George says.
Weenie George says it’s common at night for the hospital to send people home without checking them.(Four Corners: Louie Eroglu ACS)
Terrence George says when Betty sat down on their verandah, he said: “You look sick, Bubba, you better go to the hospital”.
That’s what Betty did. She never came home.
In the afternoon, a nurse recorded Betty had a fever and a fast and irregular heartbeat.
But critically, yet again, there was no alert on the hospital’s online system to show Betty had severe RHD and required urgent surgery.
By 4:45pm, Betty had been waiting for hours, seriously ill, and staff finally decided she should fly out, but she was categorised as “low dependency”, meaning staff had up to six hours to get her on a flight.
An hour later, a plane was ordered from Townsville, 850 kilometres away, instead of the closest big hospital, Mount Isa.
Betty waited for hours before staff decided to fly her out of Doomadgee.(Supplied/Four Corners: Nick Wiggins)
Marilyn Haala and her husband Clennon Bob were pacing around outside the hospital, “stressing out”.
“I wanted to go in to see her,” Mr Bob says.
“No-one would let me go in, even the nurse or the doctors.”
Within an hour, Betty deteriorated badly.
By the time a Royal Flying Doctor Service plane finally landed at Doomadgee, Betty Booth had been dead for almost two hours.
“[The] doctor that was treating her, came out and gave us the bad news: Betty didn’t make it,” Mr Bob says, slowly shaking his head.
“It broke both of our hearts,” Ms Haala says, weeping.
She says it is still painful to talk about Betty, but she hopes it will help other young people in the Doomadgee community with RHD.
“Because what they did there, they just going to keep killing people,” Ms Haala says.
“They going to keep killing them. And get away with it.”
A long wait for answers
Just three months after diagnosing Betty, Dr Remenyi returned to Doomadgee for the teenager’s funeral.
“To see Betty, who was a young, enthusiastic, caring, compassionate young woman with a bright future – to see her in a coffin … devastating,” Dr Remenyi says.
“I felt angry that in 20 years, nothing had changed.
“I became a paediatric cardiologist because I wanted to stop young women, specifically, dying from rheumatic heart disease.
“When I diagnosed Betty with rheumatic heart disease, I felt really positive.
“I felt like I could change the trajectory of her life.
“Now I’m seeing her in a coffin … I felt responsible.”
A community protest followed Betty’s death. Locals were angry and demanded answers.
Locals staged a protest outside the hospital in September 2019.(Supplied: Aiden Green/Four Corners: Nick Wiggins)
The local area health service promised an independent review into what went wrong, but the family heard nothing for almost two years.
In August 2021, shortly after Four Corners began making calls about this story, Betty’s mother Norma Mick suddenly heard from the local area health service, asking her to come for a meeting to discuss a report into Betty’s death.
Ms Mick was shocked to see the report was dated March 2020 – 17 months before.
In all that time, nobody at Doomadgee Hospital or in the health department had thought to share the report with the family.
It catalogued a series of failures that preceded Betty’s death.
Treated ‘like dogs’
The “Betty’s Story” report found Doomadgee Hospital had “clinical risk and poor governance”, low expectations for Aboriginal patients’ health, and an unwelcoming hospital environment.
“[It feels] like they treat us like animals,” Ms Haala says, angrily.
“It’s the truth.”
Other locals cited in the report said the hospital treated them “like dogs”.
Dr Remenyi hoped Betty’s diagnosis would change her life.(Four Corners: Louie Eroglu ACS)
Dr Remenyi says there’s a division between health services and the community.
“It’s racism … one group of people thinking potentially that they are better than the other,” she says.
Pat Turner, who heads the National Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation (NACCHO), the peak body in indigenous community health, says it’s inexcusable for a patient to be repeatedly turned away like Betty was.
“If I present to an emergency department and I’ve got serious symptoms, I don’t want to be handed Panadol through the grate.”
“I want a full triage and I want to have all the work done that any other Australian has a right to expect.
“The racism is absolutely out there, and it has to stop.”
RHD thrives in communities with poor housing and living conditions.(Four Corners: Louie Eroglu ACS, Nick Wiggins)
Despite the high incidence of RHD in Doomadgee for decades, the “Betty’s Story” report found staff at the hospital had “limited understanding of rheumatic heart disease”.
The disease, which had all but disappeared in white Australia by the 1990s, now almost exclusively affects Aboriginal Australians.
What is RHD?
It’s caused when repeated strep A infections in the throat or skin sores are not adequately treated, and they develop rheumatic fever
Getting rheumatic fever repeatedly damages the valves in the heart and leads to RHD, which can cause heart failure, stroke and death
It thrives in poverty – where poor housing and living conditions can allow the strep bug to spread
Rates of RHD have risen from 67 cases in 100,000 in 2014 to 81 cases in 100,000 in 2019.
But the incidence of RHD in Doomadgee’s children is far greater — 4,400 cases in 100,000.
That’s higher than sub-Saharan Africa.
“It is an appalling statistic in a country as capable and competent as Australia,” Pat Turner says.
“We stand back and watch children, time after time again, year after year, decade after decade, having still the same end result,” Dr Remenyi says, “Which is dying far too young.”
Within a year of Betty Booth’s death, two other young women with RHD died after seeking treatment in Doomadgee.
One of them was 17-year old Shakaya George, daughter of Weenie and Terrence George, the other was Shakaya’s aunt, Adele Sandy.
“They’re not helping us,” Ms Haala says of the hospital.
“They’re killing us.”
After being contacted by Four Corners, the Queensland coroner announced on Friday it would hold an inquest into the women’s deaths, including “the adequacy of the care and treatment received”.
Queensland Health Minister Yvette D’Ath told Four Corners in a statement that all three cases were under investigation by North West Hospital and Health Service.
“I would also expect any allegations about the standard of care delivered at Doomadgee Hospital to be investigated,” she said.
Follow the investigation into the deaths of these three women tonight on Four Corners on ABC TV and ABC iview.
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