Manus Island health clinic reopens

7:55 am on 8 March 2017

The health clinic for Australia's immigration detainees on Papua New Guinea's Manus Island has reopened after it closed temporarily over the weekend.

The Manus Island detention centre.

The Manus Island detention centre. Photo: Behrouz Boochani

The company that runs the clinic, International Health and Medical Services (IHMS), said healthcare was being delivered as normal at the Manus Regional Processing Centre.

It declined to say what caused the disruption.

Kurdish journalist and detainee Behrouz Boochani said the clinic closed on Friday and reopened on Monday.

He said while it was closed sick detainees were told to report to the guard house, where officers would radio medical staff to decide whether their case was an emergency.

Last week, it was reported that the IHMS parent company, International SOS, had been operating the clinic without registration from the PNG Medical Board.

But IHMS said in a statement that it was registered to provide services on Manus Island.

It said it had been made aware by the PNG Medical Board in May 2016 of concerns regarding the licensing of the clinic and had submitted all the required documentation to the Board to enable the clinic to be licensed.

The PNG Government said an independent review committee had also found ISOS had broken other laws regarding labour, tax evasion and immigration.

IHMS said those accusations were unfounded and it had provided the Government with all the information required to refute the allegations

It said it had been waiting since October 2016 for a report from the committee and that its requests to meet with government officials had been ignored.

IHMS employs 103 staff comprising 54 Papua New Guineans, 37 Australians and 12 third country nationals to provide services in Manus.

Get the RNZ app

for ad-free news and current affairs