Townsville Hospital and Health Service had a monthly flight to Palm Island and Dr O’Brien started travelling to assist with the high-risk pregnancy management in 2020.

“That service was started by a fantastic midwife and sonographer team about 20 years ago,” Dr O’Brien said. This service proved that fly-in, pop-up clinics were possible and supported by the communities.

Women’s Health Circle with the support of CheckUP Australia, began additional flights to Palm Island flights in 2023 to assist with the workload. The aim was to focus on pregnancy screening, monitoring high-risk pregnancies and serious gynaecological conditions like endometriosis.

“Once we started off on Palm, CheckUP Australia were approached by other communities asking for a similar service, and that is how the ‘Care on Country’ program started” Dr O’Brien said.

Since the commencement of the Care on Country program, up to 30 per cent of pregnancies on Mornington Island and 28 per cent of pregnancies in Doomadgee and Normanton were classified as high-risk based on either maternal, placental, uterine or fetal complications – significantly higher than the Australian average of 10 to 15 per cent.

One million people live above the Tropic of Capricorn in Northern Australia – but up until 2019, there was only one MFM service in the entire region.

The establishment of Dr O’Brien’s Women’s Health Circle now brings that number up to two.