THE Gillard government has withdrawn an indigenous health poster that wrongly located and named parts of the female anatomy.
About 2000 copies of the female human anatomy poster were printed by the government and 171 were sent to indigenous health workers around the country to promote the ''Live Longer!'' health campaign.
The Coalition's spokesman on indigenous health, Andrew Laming, identified several mistakes in the poster, including mislabelling the ovaries as the kidneys, the stomach as the lungs and the small intestine as the stomach. It also appears to show two pancreas, one of which seems to be inside the stomach, and the oesophagus running into the lung.
Dr Laming called on the Minister for Indigenous Health, Warren Snowdon, to withdraw and correct the posters.
''The lack of any attention to detail in these posters is an insult to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders that were the target audience for this material,'' Dr Laming said.
Mr Snowdon said the poster was ''unacceptable and shouldn't have gone out''.
''We have asked for all affected posters to be recalled immediately,'' he said.
A spokeswoman for the Health Department said some errors had ''crept in'' to the poster during its preparation ''and which unfortunately were missed in the final checking process''. The spokeswoman said all those who received the poster would be contacted and that the poster had been removed from the department's website.
