Australia's health 1994 : the fourth biennial report of the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare

Australia's Health is the most comprehensive and authoritative source of national information on health in Australia. Australia's Health is published mid-year in even-numbered years and provides national statistics and related information that form a record of health status, service provision and expenditure in Australia.

Australia's health 1992 : the third biennial report of the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare

Australia's Health is the most comprehensive and authoritative source of national information on health in Australia. Australia's Health is published mid-year in even-numbered years and provides national statistics and related information that form a record of health status, service provision and expenditure in Australia.

Audit of the Douglas Hocking Research Institute bone bank : ten years of non-irradiated bone graft

Background:  An audit performed in the use of non-irradiated femoral head bone graft at the Geelong Hospital over a 10-year period. While it is thought the non-irradiated bone graft provides a better structural construct there is theoretical increased risk of infection transmission.

Methods:  We performed a retrospective review of prospectively collected data in the use of non-irradiated bone allograft used from the Geelong Hospital Douglas Hosking Research Institute bone bank over a 10-year period. The review was performed using data collected from the bone bank and correlating it with the patient’s medical record. All complications, including infections, related to the use of the allograft were recorded.

Results:  We found that over the 10 years to 2004 that 811 femoral heads were donated, with 555 being used over 362 procedures in 316 patients. We identified a total of nine deep infections, of which seven were in joint replacements. Overall this was a 2.5% deep infection rate, which was lowered to 1.4% if the previously infected joints that were operated on were excluded.

Conclusion:  The use of non-irradiated femoral head bone graft was safe in a regional setting.

On memory, affect and atonement : the Long Tan memorial cross(es)

This article analyses the history of the Long Tan Memorial in Vietnam in order to open up a space for engaging with the memorialisation of war as something that can go beyond nationalistic sentimentality and create a space for more complex political and social engagements. In doing so I am concerned with exploring the value of an approach to heritage significance that prioritises relationships between places and peoples rather than authenticity and originality. I explore this question by making use of the fact that the Australian War Memorial has borrowed the original Long Tan Cross now in the custodianship of the Dong Nai Museum for a special exhibition to commemorate the Vietnam War. The Australian Vietnam Volunteers Reconstruction Group, who has official custodianship of the replica cross at the Long Tan Memorial site in Vietnam, has expressed disquiet over the loan. I use the Acting Director’s reply to the AVVRG’s Chairman to open up a discussion about the differences in meanings between these two crosses, what underlies these and how we might theorise them in order to open up an understanding of war heritage that recognises its potentials and its limitations.

Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park : an architectural consignation

Like many major urban developments designed by modernist architects. Kenzo Tange's Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park is considered by some to be founded upon tabula rasa- a blank site and/or architectural approach unconstrained by historic and aesthetic precedents. Tabula rasa is associated with a tendency to 'forget' or repress the past in order to opportunistically move on with the future. Constructed near 'ground zero' - on the site of just part of the established urban environment obliterated by the atomic bombing of Hiroshima on 6 August 1945- the tabula rasa here, however, is not achieved simply due to a conscious or critical urban design decision to move away from past urban forms and practices but through an unforseen trauma. This paper questions the application of an unqualified label of tabula rasa to Tange's Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. Focusing on Tange's writing about the Peace Park - a 1954 article entitled "Hiroshima Plan 1946-1953" in particular - and reflecting on the repeated architectural returns of Kenzo Tange and Associates to the site, this paper raises Freud's "Mystic Writing Pad" as an alternative model. It argues for a more complex consideration of the memory-work of Tange's written practice and the light it may bring to a reconsideration of this foundational architectural project within his oeuvre.