By Geoff Thompson, Joel Tozer and Wayne Harley
The urgent medical evacuation of a gravely ill asylum seeker from Manus Island was delayed by almost 30 hours partly because a public servant had gone home for the day and did not check his emails until the following morning.
That bureaucratic delay is labelled as “pathetic” by Australian Medical Association president Dr Brian Owler on Monday’s Four Corners program.
It also took almost five hours for the Department of Immigration and Border Protection to respond to the initial evacuation request, and when it did, the department asked why the detainee could not be treated on Manus Island.
The 24-year-old Iranian, Hamid Khazaei, had been on Manus Island for almost a year when he suddenly became unwell from a skin infection on his leg, and died 13 days later in Brisbane’s Mater Hospital.
The antibiotics available on Manus Island were unable to stop the infection and it rapidly progressed to septicaemia.
Mr Khazaei suffered three heart attacks and his brain began dying before he was finally evacuated to Australia for medical treatment.
Mr Khazaei was first evacuated to Port Moresby on the afternoon of Tuesday August 26, 2014.
But earlier that day a senior doctor from International SOS (ISOS) which was organising the evacuation, recommended instead that Mr Khazaei be evacuated directly to a hospital in Brisbane.
Speaking out for the first time, Dr Stewart Condon, who is now the president of Medicins San Frontieres Australia, told Four Corners that his Brisbane recommendation was not acted upon.
“That’s certainly something that I strongly felt about some of these cases, that our recommendation to move to Port Moresby was inadequate,” he said.
“Knowing the level of medical care available in Port Moresby and knowing that many of the similar cases we worked around the world would move to a place like Brisbane.”
Doctors defy Border Force Act to speak out
Dr Condon and other doctors and healthworkers appearing in tonight’s program, are risking potential imprisonment under the Border Force Act, which makes it illegal for people working within Australia’s asylum seeker detention system to disclose information.
The Government has said that the Border Force Act is not designed to target doctors.
Dr David Isaacs was one of the first Australian doctors to test the legislation by speaking out after he worked on Nauru with the Government’s detention health services contractor International Health and Medical Services (IHMS).
“I don’t think the Border Force Act is good legislation and I think it should be challenged,” he said.
“Why haven’t I been prosecuted? My feeling is that this legislation is not about actually imprisoning doctors, it’s about silencing doctors, and others.”
Mr Khazaei was finally pronounced dead at Brisbane’s Mater Hospital on September 5, 2014 after a week on life support.
Hours before his death the then immigration minister Scott Morrison praised the quality of medical care received by detainees on Manus Island and Nauru.
“When someone becomes ill, they receive outstanding care from the people who work as part of our mainland detention network and in the offshore processing centres that are under the management of the governments of Papua New Guinea and Nauru,” he said.
“IHMS who work as part of that team there do an outstanding job,” he added.
Mr Khazaei’s death is being investigated by the Queensland coroner with a pre-inquest hearing scheduled for June 10 this year.
This post originally appeared on ABC News.
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Top Comments
Just to check - the public servant who didn't check their email after they finished work.... Are they paid to keep working after office hours are over? Are they on call?
I know I don't check my emails when I'm not at work... So ... Would appreciate some clarity there
Good question DSS - because apparently last week, it was the WORST THING IN THE WORLD to expect part time women to check their emails or answer phones on their days off... so why are we slamming this public servant for not doing so? Clearly there needs to be a change in the system, but it seems like people want to have their cake and eat it too at times.
I was thinking why not phone when someone is seriously sick email in not appropriate in an emergency.
According to the 4Corners episode the public servant was not on call or paid to check emails after hours. The point made by the doctors involved was that if Immigration wants public servants to approve medical requests then public servants need to be on call because medical emergencies happen all hours of the day.
The alternative would be to allow doctors to do thier jobs and provide medical treatment without interference from public servants. Any review of efficacy of any particular medical decision can come later, in standard working hours, if Immigration suspects a doctor is abusing the system somehow. The only reason public servants are involved is for systems management - that shouldn't prevent medical treatment and doesn't need to be after hours.
I was sickened by what those doctors had to say. That man was treated inhumanely. I can't believe this is allowed to happen and I'm ashamed by our government and those in our community who think it's ok. Once you let medical standards drop for one group of people you're on a slippery slope. What have we become?
Totally agree. And why is this public servant being involved, surely in an emergency this should go straight to the doctors and bypass this stop?