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Asylum seeker children are not "blocking up beds" in the Royal Children's Hospital.

“I think most Victorians are very, very proud of the work of the Royal Children’s Hospital.”

In all likelihood the image of hundreds of staff from the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne protesting against the treatment of children in Australia’s immigration detention facilities has cropped up in your news feed in the past 48 hours.

The photograph and accompanying statement have now be shared more than 6,500 times on Facebook and garnered more than 16,000 likes. (Mamamia ran a story saying thank you to the staff and you can read that here.)

If you missed it, here it is:

Staff at the RCH declare that “Detention harms children”. Image via Facebook.

On Sunday, the Herald Sun ran an exclusive story explaining that doctors at the hospital were refusing to discharge asylum seeker children if it meant returning them to detention centres.

“Detention centres are not safe for children,” the doctors wrote.

“Children are exposed to the distress, violence and mental health problems of adults, and parents cannot protect their children from these circumstances.”

It is an incredibly brave act of defiance, not least because of new federal laws threatening health workers with up to two years’ jail for speaking out against conditions in the centres and if the Facebook post is anything to go by, the doctors certainly have public support.

Their actions have also been praised by Victoria’s Health Minister, Jill Hennessy, who said she was “incredibly proud”.

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“They’re making a judgement about what is in the best interests of the children and I think they are well within their rights to do so,” Hennessey told Jon Faine on ABC 774 on Monday morning.

Unfortunately, not everyone has been as supportive as Ms Hennessey though and Faine raised the “cost issue” related to the doctors’ decision.

Playing devil’s advocate, he asked: “Why are they still in the hospital and why are they still blocking up two beds that should be available for two other kids that need to get into the hospital?”

Ms Hennessey responded that no children from detention centres are currently being treated in the hospital, but “that’s not to say that there is not a resource obligation or a consequence when there is.”

“We run a public health system and is a world class institution that treats children whether they come from a detention centre or whether they come from a wealthy families in Melbourne,” she said.

“We simply provide those services and I think most Victorians are very, very proud of the work of the Royal Children’s Hospital.”

A child held in the Manus Island detention facility.

She added that the federal government would be “very brave” to take legal action against the hospital staff given that they are essentially just doing their jobs.

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“Doctors have not just a legal obligation but also an ethical obligation when it comes to discharge planning and if they believe that they are sending a patient out into a set of circumstances where that patient is going to get worse, not better, than that is a factor taken into consideration when it comes to clinical decision making.”

The Australian Medical Association’s Dr Tony Bartone agreed that doctors must “keep a compassionate and an ethical eye out for the rights of our most vulnerable members of society,” which, of course, includes asylum seekers.

“We’re an international citizen and we’ve got an ethical duty to care for whoever is here and both Australian citizens and anyone visiting Australia, regardless of the circumstances of their coming into our care,” he told Mamamia.

He acknowledged that there is a finite supply of health resources on offer, but said it was therefore incredibly important that those resources are distributed equitably.

“You can’t have second class citizens and that is what our health system is based upon; the universality of access of care,” he said.

If the government does decide to proceed a with a legal challenge of the staff of the Royal Children’s Hospital, Kon Karapanagiotidis of the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre has promised to represent them for free.

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