Kintore

Kintore or Walungurru is 550kms west of Alice and is where it all started.

Concerned by the alarming number of their people and families having to dislocate from community to Alice Springs for dialysis treatment, Pintupi people from the Western Desert region of Central Australia started the Western Desert Dialysis Appeal to raise money for on country dialysis services.

Their passion and perseverance paid off – from the funds raised they purchased a dialysis machine which was installed in the Kintore Health Clinic. The first dialysis in Kintore took place on the 25th of September 2004.

In 2010, due to the amazing support and hard work of the Woden Rotary Club, we opened the Kintore Purple House, increasing our capacity to two chairs and providing much needed accommodation for our nurses. This amazing team of compassionate and industrious people took on the overwhelming job of transforming the ‘blue house’, an abandoned building, into the ‘Purple House’ dialysis unit. This was a huge job and many Rotary teams travelled to Kintore from the Eastern states to work on the project. We are so grateful for their generosity and hard work!

These days we are able to have significant community elders Hilary Japaljari and Maurice Gibson at home in Kintore full time and provide other patients from Kintore time at home on country.

When we first started dialysis in Kintore in 2004, Pintupi Homelands Health Service kindly allowed us the use of a small room at the back of the Primary Health Care clinic. This had just room for 1 machine.

In 2007 the Kintore Council gifted us a large abandoned building next to the clinic. (click here to see BEFORE photos)

With help philanthropic support from Suters Architects in Newcastle who redesigned and reengineered the building for us, sustained and significant efforts of Woden Rotary and a small grant from the Commonwealth Government for building materials. we now have a substantial building in Kintore with room for four dialysis machines, community kitchen and three bedroom house. The building opened in November 2010.

The aim is for the building to be a real community asset and to provide the venue for health promotion activities as well as dialysis.

Woden Rotary sent work teams to Kintore over a number of years and with the help of some fantastic Indigenous Community Volunteers an enormous push enabled us to open for dialysis.

Landscaping work will be completed by the Belconnan Rotary club in the new year. We have collected local seeds and bush medicine plants which are being propagated for us by our friends at the Desert Park in Alice Springs.

Stay tuned for the date of our official opening sometime in 2011.