$23,000 per day, medical services not included

Jack Smit

Medical care in detention centres is still substandard, and is not at all confined to the past, contrary to former immigration minister Philip Ruddock's allegations on ABC's AM program on May 6.

Project SafeCom has been able to confirm with friends of Palestinian refugee Aladdin Sisalem, who is being held at the Lombrum processing centre on Manus Island at a daily cost to the Australian taxpayer of $23,000, that he has not received any form of medical care for more than eight months, despite repeatedly requesting to see a doctor.

Sisalem also reported that he has been served just one meal per day during last eight months, and claimed that these meals were of inferior quality. He also suspected that the standard meals "of frozen chicken" are past the use-by-date.

The lone asylum seeker has also reported to advocates that his gums bleed every time he tries to eat — a symptom associated with severe vitamin deficiency — and he has stopped eating. He also suffers from recurring stomach pains.

Before the doctor was removed from the centre, according to Adelaide advocate Matt Hamon, Sisalem was assessed as suffering from depression and post-traumatic-stress syndrome. Hamon has written to shadow immigration minister Stephen Smith and Labor MP Carmen Lawrence.

The federal Coalition government is continually in breach of minimum standards of medical care, and is guilty of serious medical neglect. The fact that it contracts outside agents, in this case the International Organisation of Migration, for medical care of detainees does not remove the blame for its deliberate mistreatment of human beings.

From Green Left Weekly, May 26, 2004.

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From GLW issue 583