The National Healthy Skin Guideline is designed to help healthcare providers easily recognise, diagnose, and treat skin infections. The Guideline provides detailed information on how to stop the spread of germs and keep skin strong and healthy. The Second Edition of the Guideline is more inclusive of urban-living Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians and provides evidence of where individual treatment and community-wide interventions are likely to be of benefit.
Research shows hospitalisation rates for skin infections in Aboriginal children are 15 times higher than those of non-Aboriginal children, with nearly half of all children living in remote communities having a skin infection at any one time. A big part of the problem is that skin infections have become so common that they are considered ‘normal’ and are left untreated, leading to serious, life-threatening illnesses such as chronic heart and kidney disease.
The Second Edition of the National Healthy Skin Guideline builds upon the First Edition, which was designed to help health care providers easily recognise, diagnose and treat skin infections using online resources such as photographs, learning tools and an interactive questionnaire. The updated edition has a new focus with the addition of three skin conditions (atopic dermatitis, molluscum contagiosum and head lice) recognised for their high burden in Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
Research over the past two decades has proven that these skin diseases are important causes of severe illness and death from invasive bacterial infection and complications resulting from autoimmune disease in Australian Indigenous communities and many overseas populations.
The updated Guideline has taken into consideration changes in treatment availability or regulatory changes in therapeutic indications and is designed to help practitioners and policy makers diagnose, treat and prevent skin infections. The recommendations have been aligned with key source references that are used in different regions of Australia and links are provided to regional guidelines.
National Healthy Skin Guideline 2nd Edition Additional Resources
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