LINK Disability Magazine spoke to Australian Medical Association NT spokesperson Dr Paul Bauert for further comment on the below story. This is what he had to say... * Do you think in Australia we show a lack of compassion to kids in detention – and their health? “We’re constantly frustrated by our inability to provide a standard of healthcare that we feel all kids in Australia should receive, whether they be in a lockup facility or not. It all relates to good clinical handover and AMA members are concerned for individual cases, like this little girl with Down syndrome, that we still don’t know at this time whether any adequate follow-up has been arranged for her and she has a potentially life-threatening heart condition. So yes, it shows poor processes and driving those poor processes is a lack of compassion.” * If the same thing happened to a child, who is an Australian citizen, do you think we’d be ‘up in arms’? “That is true and I don’t think that this situation would arise in other circumstances. The problem is that with a lot of children with complex medical conditions, [it does] involve regular, intense, specialist follow-up and treatment. The fact that these kids can be moved with their family from one lockup facility in one state to another lockup facility in another state overnight really makes it difficult for us to provide the same standard of care that we would for other kids when these situations arise. It’s taken a bit of a turn for the worse this afternoon because the Department [of Immigration and Citizenship] has granted the family with a bridging visa, which is good news, but still will not allow us any contact with the family and even the names of the family and their whereabouts. They actually left Darwin yesterday. We’re in a position that we know this child has significant medical problems and we are unaware that the parents fully understand these problems. We certainly don’t have any plans for ongoing management for this child, because we’re being hindered in our attempts to do that. So I just feel that, for all the paediatricians who deal with the increasing number of children from detention centres and other lockup facilities, that there needs to be more of a focus on good clinical handover and the children’s medical needs themselves. Behind all of that is the fact that many of these kids will end up as Australian citizens. And because of their time in detention centres and because of issues like this, they will end up being a lot more damaged – both physically and mentally – than they otherwise would have been. So we’re building a generation of people with ongoing chronic physical and mental health because of the way we’re treating them now.” * How did the child get to hospital? Are there many health checks in detention? “Yes, there’s a group called the IHMS [International Health and Medical Services]. They receive funding from the federal government to look after the health needs of detainees. So a guard brought this mother and child to the private hospital to have a cardiogram done and that’s where the problem was realised. That’s where the treating doctor wanted to ensure adequate follow-up and ensure that the parents understood what was going on, but was never given the opportunity to do that and the child was flown interstate and we’re not being given any contact details.” * Could it be argued that treating young detainees with health problems puts a burden of our already stretched services, though? “It does put extra pressure on us, but it’s certainly not a burden. What is a burden is knowing that we haven’t provided adequate treatment and that adequate treatment includes good clinical follow-up and good clinical handover. So that’s probably more oppressive in the workplace than the numbers that we’re dealing with.”
Posted on: Thu, 05 Sep 2013 06:59:42 +0000
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