Recent research reveals the Northern Territory's Indigenous population reported the highest hospital admission rates for swine flu across Australia.

The research was carried out by the Menzies School of Health Research, the Northern Territory Centre for disease Control and the Royal Darwin Hospital.

It reveals of 161 patients admitted to the Top End hospitals for swine flu the previous year, nearly 72 per cent were Indigenous.

The hospital admission rate for Indigenous people was 12 times greater than non-Indigenous people.

According to Steven Tong, co-author of the study, poor living conditions are one of the factors for the high swine flu infection among the Indigenous people.

A lot of the houses don't have adequate facilities to wash hands and shower.

Only 50 per cent have tubs and baths to wash the kids in and only about 30 per cent have showers that actually work.

So a combination of those things means that it's the perfect environment for something like influenza to spread from one person to another.

Australia Medicine