Chief medical officer latest to be forced off Nauru
The chief medical officer contracted by the Australian government to look after the health of refugees and asylum seekers on Nauru is in the process of being deported from the island.
Fairfax Media has confirmed with government sources that senior doctor Nicole Montana will be placed on a flight to Australia and replaced.
It was not immediately clear why the doctor was being forced to leave the island. Other sources suggested Dr Montana was arrested by Nauruan authorities yesterday.
The contractor, International Health and Medical Services, has been contacted for comment.
Dr Montana’s predecessor, Christopher Jones, was removed from Nauru in early September after authorities cancelled his visa. The visa was reportedly cancelled after disagreements with the Nauruan government about medical transfers.
Last week, global humanitarian giant Medecins Sans Frontieres was also ejected from the island, where it was providing mental health services to locals and refugees.
In recent weeks, Prime Minister Scott Morrison has come under significant pressure from several of his own MPs to get children and their families off Nauru.
Morrison has now signalled his intention to take up New Zealand’s long-standing offer to accept 150 refugees from Nauru and Manus Island – as long as the Parliament agrees to laws permanently banning the refugees from ever getting a visa to come to Australia.
Greens immigration spokesman Nick McKim said the deportation showed ‘‘the whole edifice is crumbling before our very eyes’’.
‘‘The Liberals have lost control of what’s happening over there and are completely incapable of providing medical support to desperately traumatised child and their families,’’ he said.
As of last week, IHMS had 65 contracted health professionals providing medical services to refugees and asylum seekers on Nauru, including 33 mental health professionals.
At a press conference in Sydney last week, Medecins Sans Frontieres doctors said refugees in Nauru did not ‘‘trust’’ IHMS because they saw it as a branch of their ‘‘captors’’.
The IHMS chief medical officer on the island is different from the Australian Border Force chief medical officer, Parbodh Gogna, who is based in Australia.
Pressure from some Liberal MPs to urgently take families off Nauru has divided the government. Minister for Veterans’ Affairs Darren Chester told Sky News he was ‘‘sympathetic’’ to his colleagues’ concerns but ‘‘deeply troubled’’ about the possibility of encouraging boats to restart.
Health Minister Greg Hunt said the motives of Liberal MPs pushing to relax the policy were ‘‘very different’’ from the motives of Labor MPs, whom he accused of wanting to ‘‘re-energise’’ the people smuggling trade.
According to government statistics, there were 189 people living at the regional processing centre in Nauru at the end of July. Many hundreds more reside in the Nauruan community, awaiting possible resettlement in the United States.