Medical Care Standards for Hunger strikers seriously breached
"Refugee group Project SafeCom says that the Baxter detention centre operator GSL, is in serious breach of medical
standards, especially in relation to the management of a hunger strike, not only, but also as laid down by the
Declaration of Malta."
Under the declaration of Malta, wrote WA lawyer and Senior lecturer at Murdoch University Mary-Ann Kenny recently in the
Medical Journal of Australia,
"if called upon to treat hunger strikers, medical practitioners should be aware of their ethical and legal
responsibilities, and that they should act independently of government or institutional interests."
"At the background of the current hunger strike at the Baxter detention centre, if not leading to it, is the fact that
Detention Centre Operator GSL suddenly changed the way medication is dispensed at the Baxter centre."
"A few weeks ago it suddenly announced that medication would no longer be handed out in the compounds, but that
detainees had to board a bus to a central location within the Baxter detention centre - once a day - to collect the
medication. Although GSL has now reverted to its "pre-bustrip" method of dispensing medication, two question remain:
"1) whether medication, which includes anti-depressants such as Zoloft, is handed out by medically qualified staff or
just by GSL staff without the proper qualifications and training, and
"2) whether the apparent change to regularity of times at which medication is handed out has an effect on detainees: you
cannot suddenly change times and or frequency of administering medication without expecting major side-effects on the
part of clients."
"Reports received overnight indicate that GSL staff have, from 4pm yesterday afternoon (Sunday 12/12), expressly
forbidden detainees who wanted to assist, from climbing on the roof to hand bottles of water to the three hunger
strikers. This seems to indicate that GSL likes to promote and advance the death of the three hunger strikers who have
been on the roof since last week."
Reports have also been received, that GSL staff have "banged on the roof with broom sticks or something" all night on
Sunday 12 December to disturb the three hunger strikers on the roof. "If this is the current medical practice to keep
hunger strikers from slipping into a coma, we wonder whether third-world standards of medical care would qualify for the
Nobel Prize by comparison".
"It seems clear, that a company that protects its accountability under a veil of "commercial-in-confidence" is more
interested in whatever its own agenda may be, than in putting the physical and psychological well-being of its clients
first, in this case asylum seekers, and especially within this context, long-term detainees on a hunger strike, all of
them showing advanced signs of Port Traumatic Stress Disorder."
"It's more than time for an immediate trip to the Baxter detention centre of a team of medically qualified
investigators, in addition to an independent negotiator."
MORE INFORMATION:
Jack H Smit, Project SafeCom, Phone: 041 70 90 130
ONLINE RESOURCES:
Medical and Ethical Aspects of Hunger Strikes in Custody and the Issue of Torture
Legal and ethical implications of medically enforced feeding of detained asylum seekers on hunger strike