Mortality from cardiac conditions is falling among Indigenous Australians, dropping by 49% over two decades, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) reports.

But despite the improvement between 1998 and 2017, Indigenous mortality was still 1.5 times higher than for non-Indigenous people nationally and three times higher in the Northern Territory, the researchers said.

“Some progress has been made toward better cardiac care for Indigenous Australians,” wrote the authors of the report, Better Cardiac Care Measures for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People.

The document is the fourth report on the Australian Health Ministers’ Advisory Council initiative aimed at reducing Indigenous illness and death from cardiac conditions, and combines AIHW data with information from the Australian Bureau of Statistics and Medicare.