Concerns raised over treatment of Manus Is, refugees

Transcript

The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners issued a joint statement with the Royal Australasian College of Physicians and the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists. The colleges' urge the Australian government to ensure Manus Island refugees have access to the medical care they need. The president of the GPs' body Bastien Seidel says he's extremely worried for the health of the vulnerable men he says are Australia's responsibility.

"The information that we are receiving seems to be very much filtered. There's no transparency there and that raises alarm bells amongst the medical community. If there's nothing to see then there's nothing to hide. Medical doctors should be allowed to go over to have access to see those people, to speak to them, to have a look at the facility, to assess the services that are available and to report back to the Australian community and to report back to Australian medical doctors. That's a common sense approach. There's no politics involved there. It's just a commitment to be transparent when it comes to the healthcare of vulnerable people."

The president of the college of physicians Catherine Yelland says Australia has an obligation to ensure the refugees receive the same care they would in any Australian hospital.

"For a long time the college has aimed to stop offshore mandatory detention of asylum seekers. So yes we think fundamentally there needs to be political change, but also in the immediate term there needs to be transparency and an awareness of what is happening to those people."

Australian development workers in Solomon Islands also fear for the refugees' health. A group of 27, including doctors and nurses, has sent an open letter to the government alleging its treatment of refugees on Manus Island is undermining their work by damaging Australia's reputation in the region. One of the signatories, lawyer Ben Lilley says trust in Australia's public health development workers is being eroded.

"I think it certainly has an impact on the attitudes of Solomon Islanders towards Australians. Particularly Australians working in public health. I think that the Australian government's actions in Manus are detrimental to the health of the asylum seekers that are being housed there. And it's difficult, I think, for development workers in the pacific to present Australia as a model practitioner of public health if Australia is acting in a way that is harmful elsewhere in the region."

Ben Lilley's group is calling for an end to what it describes as Australia's internationally condemned policy of offshore detention.