Petitions are circulating in each of the western NSW communities served by the Marrabinya program as Aboriginal people react to a decision by the Western NSW Primary Health Network (Western PHN) to cease funding the service from the end of 2022.

Marrabinya is a Wiradjuri word meaning “hand outstretched" and since 2016, the Aboriginal-run program has acted as brokerage service to assist Aboriginal people with a diagnosed chronic illness to access medical support services, even in the most isolated communities.

The priority chronic diseases are heart disease, diabetes, respiratory disease, kidney and liver disease and cancer.

People are referred by their General Practitioner and receive assistance with specialist appointments, transport, accommodation and medical aids.

"The Marrabinya program is implemented by 100% Aboriginal staff and the success of this program has been evident year after year with an increase in supplementary support services being brokered and the increase of the number of clients utilising the program each year," said program Co-ordinator Donna Jeffries.

"To cease funding the Marrabinya program will have a devastating impact on the capacity of many Aboriginal people in Western and Far West NSW to attend their Specialist Medical appointments.

"This in turn will have a snowball effect on not only the clients but their families and communities in which they live," she said.

"Without governments supporting unique programs like the Marrabinya Program the ‘Gap’ for Aboriginal health will never close."

With funding due to end in June 2022, the program received a temporary reprieve until December 2022.

"I don’t know what their thinking is," said Coonamble-based Senior Care Link Worker Kym Lees.

"There's already a lot of angry people and some are saying they're not going to attend their appointments which, with a cardiology specialist can cost up to $500."

Kym has worked with Marrabinya for almost six years and says part of the success of the program is in providing independence for their clients.

"We work with the clients to make sure they understand what's happening, where they need to go and how to get there, whereas before they didn't know they had appointments, they'd be picked up and didn't even know where they were going," she said.

"We were giving that independence."

Ms Lees also pointed out that the program had been widely recognised for its success and won multiple awards, and was cited as a case study of 'What works' in the PHN's own Reconciliation Action Plan.

"From Coonamble I serve 300 clients in Gulargambone, Quambone, Baradine, Coonabarabran, Gilgandra and Binnaway," she said. "We have over 4000 clients all up in our region."

The Marrabinya Program employs ten staff, all Aboriginal workers, across an area from Bathurst to Balrandald, Bourke and Broken Hill.

At a rugby league football knockout in Goodooga in early April this year just under 300 signatures were collected from people who share genuine concerns about the future of the Marrabinya program.

Petitions and letters have since been submitted from residents in other towns across the west.

The Western NSW PHN are yet to issue a statement regarding the end of funding for Marrabinya's program however, Coonamble Aboriginal Health Service CEO Phil Naden told the Coonamble Times that the situation was not all doom and gloom.

"A major review was conducted and feedback provided from right around the region," he said.

 "Whilst Marrabinya might not continue in its current form the service will not be lost."