Australia responsible for ‘preventable’ death of Iranian migrant
The family of the Iranian asylum seeker Hamid Khazaei, whose death from infection on Manus Island was caused by a cascading series of errors and systemic failures in the Australian-run offshore detention center, said “nothing will replace the life of their beloved son and brother”.
But they have urged the Australian government to heed the findings of the Queensland coroner Terry Ryan, which were handed down on Monday, The Guardian reported.
Ryan found that Khazaei’s death was preventable and recommended that healthcare on the offshore islands be properly funded and run – and under the control of doctors – or asylum seekers and refugees be moved to Australia.
“The coroner’s findings of inquest is an exhaustive and powerful document and it will take some time … to process it,” the family said.
“The family thanks the coroner for the thoroughness of his investigation and his findings and urges the Australian government to take his honor’s recommendations seriously.”
The coroner recommended that doctors treating asylum seekers and refugees on offshore islands should have control of patient transfers to hospital care in Australia. Doctors’ recommendations for higherlevel care are now routinely overruled by non-medically trained Australian Border Force officials and Department of Home Affairs bureaucrats.
The coroner also recommended that all deaths of asylum seekers and refugees sent offshore by Australia should be subject to a mandatory inquest in Australia – essentially that they be treated as deaths in custody, as Khazaei’s was.
Khazaei was a fit and healthy 24-year-old when he was forcibly removed from Australia to Manus Island in 2013, the coroner found.
“Mr Khazaei was well known by everyone at the RPC [regional processing center]. He was considered polite and respectful to all, regardless of religious or cultural differences, and was well liked,” the coroner said.
On 23 August, 2014, Khazaei presented to the Manus Island medical clinic with flu-like symptoms and a small lesion on his leg. The clinic did not have the basic antibiotic to treat his common tropical infection, and, despite treatment, Khazaei’s condition deteriorated rapidly.
Doctors on the island urged his immediate transfer to Australia but this was first ignored – including by department of immigration bureaucrats who didn’t read their emails for up to 13 hours – and then rejected by the department.
After further pleading from doctors trying to treat him, approval was finally granted – two days after the initial request – to move Khazaei, by now semiconscious and septic. But the department ordered he be moved not to Australia but to Port Moresby’s Pacific International hospital.
At the PIH, Khazaei was misdiagnosed, treated with broken equipment and left unattended as he grew critically ill.
He suffered a series of cardiac arrests and, by the time he was transported to Brisbane’s Mater hospital, was profoundly brain-damaged.
In a 140-page finding, Ryan found that Australia held sole responsibility for Khazaei’s care and for the failures that led to his death.
Ryan said Khazaei could have been saved by basic interventions at several points during his worsening illness but that “the compounding effect of multiple errors” and “systemic failures” in the offshore healthcare system had led to his death.
Ten people have died in offshore detention since Khazaei’s death. Ryan said further deaths would be prevented by moving people to a place where healthcare standards were higher, such as Australia or New Zealand.
Kate Schuetze, Amnesty International’s Pacific researcher, said Australia was failing its human rights obligations. “And that continues while people are being held on Manus in these cruel conditions and denied adequate healthcare while they’re there.”