Fourteen-month-old Anais Nicholls was sitting on the floor at the centre on Friday, January 22, when a 36 centimetre dugite slithered under the door and bit her twice on the wrist.

Anais and her family, who farm at Koorda, then faced a harrowing dash to Perth with the Royal Flying Doctor Service because there was no doctor available locally.

“It happened at about four thirty in the afternoon, and the Kununoppin Hospital’s doctor had already gone home for the weekend,” said Anais’s father Stephen.

“There’s no doctor at all at Wyalkatchem any more, which is our next closest hospital.

“So basically we have to go to either Merredin or Northam, both more than 100 kilometres away, which isn’t good enough.”

Luckily, Anais arrived at Princess Margaret Hospital in time to be treated, and recovered fully from the incident, but Mr Nicholls said the outcome could have been a lot different.

“We had to rely on RFDS, and we just had to hope we were lucky enough that the RFDS wasn’t busy on another emergency, otherwise, she could have died,” he said.

Mr Nicholls said the lack of health services in the country had reached crisis point.

“With more than 50 GP vacancies in WA, local shires are being forced into a bidding war, offering up to $4000 per day of ratepayers’ money to attract doctors to the regions,” he said.

“The doctors that we do have don’t want to work on weekends or out of business hours so there is a lack of acute care within reasonable distances.

“Although there is an on-call roster it doesn’t always work as doctors might be away or unavailable.

“We were lucky, but there are other people who have had this problem, and the outcomes aren’t always good.

“Something should be done. We are entitled to good services out here regardless of where we live.”

As reported in the Mercury on December 23, the Southern Cross, Wyalkatchem and Kondinin doctors have all recently resigned leaving a gap in Wheatbelt health services.