They made an oath to “do no harm,” and now they’re following through.
At least 300 doctors and other health professionals at a children’s hospital in Brisbane have called for he immediate release of children from immigration detention.
Hundreds of the hospital staffers gathered around lunchtime on Tuesday for a protest photo outside the front of the hospital, holding banners declaring: “Detention harms children,” ABC News reports.
“Staff at our hospital have seen children with post-traumatic stress disorder, attempted suicide, developmental delays, recurrent nightmares, anxiety-related bed wetting, failure to thrive – a whole range of problems,” the Lady Cilento Children’s Hospital’s clinical ethics fellow, Dr Melanie Jansen, told ABC radio on Tuesday.
“Detention centres are not places where children’s well-being are being promoted,” Dr Jansen told the ABC.
Director of Paediatrics at LCCHDr David Levitt said: “Queensland health professionals wish to stand with our colleagues in Melbourne and call for an end to children in detention. We have extensively reviewed the scientific evidence and it couldn’t be more clear – detention harms children.”
Dr Jansen said medical professionals have lobbied for years, but the government had failed to listen.
The Royal Australian College of Physicians has previously demanded an audit of all allegations of sexual and physical abuse on Nauru, with its president telling Guardian Australia: “Detention centres are no place for children… This situation is unacceptable”.
Australian Medical Association president Brian Owler agreed.
“This is a matter of human rights, it’s a matter of stopping systematic abuse of children that is sanctioned by the Australian government,” he said.
The Brisbane protest follows a similar move by more than 400 staff and allied health professionals at the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne.
“At the Children’s Hospital, our team find it’s almost impossible to treat these children effectively while they remain detained,” head of general medicine Dr Tom Connell said.
“In children from detention, our team see children with nightmares, bed wetting, and severe behaviour problems, children from detention develop anxiety and depression,” he added. “It’s become so common that it’s almost normal in children from detention to have these symptoms.
Thank you to the medical professionals across the country standing up for the 197 asylum-seeker children that Australia is keeping behind bars.
You are being good doctors. You are being good people.
Top Comments
But doctors? The ones whose wives drive BMWs? The ones who rip off the public by referring for medical procedures you don't need? The ones who sexually harass registrars and condone a culture of bullying and harassment within the specialty colleges? The ones who are rude, brusque and always, according to every patient ever, didn't seem to know anything about anything? The ones who lord it over nurses? The ones who protect each others incompetencies and hide negligence?
Those are 'doctors' according to the usual slant in the leftist media, my dears. So don't you dare try and suck up to them now. They're too used to being abused by you.
Good lord!
Oh my God, are you kidding me with that bullsh*t rant?! I imagine you'll find that any person with a right wing political lean would be just as outraged by all the things you've outlined. And if they aren't, then frankly they should be.
Doctors are there to a job to the best of their ability. They're not there to over prescribe, sexually harass, bully or hide negligence. The fact that that does indeed go on in hospitals is an absolute disgrace in their profession and should be uncovered whenever it happens.
"usual slant in the leftist media, my dears."
That's gold.
Happy hump day!
Hey Bitten,
I'm a subscriber to a Fairfax paper, The Guardian, and The Monthly, and I have no idea what you're talking about.
Sincerely,
A doctor