Asylum-seekers’ health worsening
While New Zealand sits and waits to see whether Australia will have a change of mind, or heart, over the Manus Island situation, Australian doctors warn the asylumseekers’ health is deteriorating.
What may seem like an Australian domestic political issue has also become an issue for New Zealand, thanks in large part to Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s strong stance on the situation on Manus Island.
Ardern has repeatedly reconfirmed her offer to the Australian Government to resettle up to 150 asylum-seekers who tried to travel to Australia by boat and were then detained and processed at an Australian-run centre in Papua New Guinea.
It was an offer first made by former prime minister John Key, but Ardern has become more insistent this year.
It has been rejected, thus far, with priority being given by the current Australian Goverment to a resettlement deal in the United States.
And last week, the news broke that America would take a second cohort of refugees – 70 from Papua New Guinea and 130 from Nauru.
An earlier group of 54 refugees moved to the US in September, following a deal brokered between Australia and former American president Barack Obama in 2016.
Meanwhile, Australian doctors have emphasised their rising concern for the health and wellbeing of the male asylum-seekers recently transferred to PNG from the centre, after it was mothballed by the Australian Government, despite protestation by the detainees, who said they felt safer in the centre than in the proposed new accommodation on the Papua New Guinean mainland.
The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP), the Royal Australasian College of Physicians (RACP) and the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists (RANZCP) have banded together to write a letter to the Australian ministers of health, immigration, aged care and indigenous health, urging them to consider the physical and mental health of those men.
RACGP president Bastian Seidel said the level of care available to these men was a serious concern.
‘‘As medical practitioners, we cannot sit back knowing the standard of care received by those seeking asylum in Australia is anything but acceptable,’’ he said.
Many of the men would be experiencing significant trauma, and needed immediate care to improve their health and wellbeing.
New Zealand College of Psychiatrists president Kym Jenkins said she was deeply concerned that the transfer from one detention centre to another would place a severe toll on the already precarious mental health of the asylum seekers and refugees.
‘‘It is crucial that their psychiatric and other health needs are urgently addressed and that they receive the expert trauma-informed care they require,’’ Jenkins added.