news
#BringThemHere
– we will help
Health organisation joins campaign
to end offshore detention.
A
n Australian not-for-profit health and aged care
organisation has reaffirmed its willingness to provide
medical support and healthcare to asylum seekers currently
held in offshore detention centres on Manus Island and Nauru.
St Vincent’s Health Australia has lent its voice to the
#BringThemHere campaign, which calls for people in offshore
detention to be evacuated and for those unsuccessful in being
resettled in the US to be transferred and housed in Australia.
Toby Hall, SVHA chief executive, said the group’s hospitals
have a history of supporting the health needs of people seeking
asylum through the delivery of primary healthcare and free
diagnostic services.
“Our experience providing care to asylum seekers in the
community is that mental health issues represent the highest
burden of disease, and antidepressants are the highest prescribed
medication in this population,” Hall said, adding the situation is
much worse in offshore detention centres.
“Medical experts with the United Nations High Commission
for Refugees who visited Manus Island and Nauru last year
found alarming rates of mental health problems in people
who have been held there for the last four years. They found
that 88 per cent of asylum seekers and refugees on Manus
Island were suffering from a depressive or anxiety disorder or
post-traumatic stress disorder. These rates were considered
far in excess of comparable populations such as refugees
resettled in Australia or asylum seekers in the Australian
community.
“We cannot ignore the body of clinical and research evidence
about the detrimental effects of holding people indefinitely in
detention,” Hall said.
Group mission leader Lisa McDonald’s explanation of SVHA’s
decision to offer healthcare and medical support to people
currently held on Manus and Nauru is simple: it’s the right
thing to do. ■
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