Child asylum seeker trauma highlighted in report

Transcript

Over 80 percent of Australian paediatricians surveyed in a recent report believe the detention of asylum seeker children is child abuse.

The report revealed the knowledge and attitudes of paediatricians on refugee and asylum seeker issues both on and offshore.

Indira Moala reports.

All of those surveyed had had experience with asylum seeker children, yet fewer than half knew which subgroups of asylum seekers were eligible for Medicare. They also hadn't had access to the children's medical history including important pre-departure HIV and tuberculosis tests. Less than half the respondents knew the average stay in refugee camps before settlement in Australia was more than 10 years. One of the report's authors, Dr Hasantha Gunasekera has been treating asylum seeker children for the past ten years and most recently provided paediatric services on Nauru. He said doctors are not to blame for their lack of knowledge surrounding asylum seeker children.

HASANTHA GUNASEKERA: The trouble we have is that there's such a lack of transparency in this area that it's very hard to get information and people would prefer not to talk about these problems and so finding out the basic level of information and what to do is very difficult. So I'm not actually blaming my colleagues for this and when you see the level of knowledge as it is, it's clearly not a problem with the individual paediatricians - when it's the entire cohort throughout the whole country, it's clearly a systemic problem.

The spokesperson for the Refugee Action Coalition, Ian Rintoul, says the lack of transparency does not surprise him.

IAN RINTOUL: The wider information is simply not made widely known, some people are quite shocked to find out things like that the Minister is the guardian of unaccompanied minors while they're in detention. For most people that's just an unbelievable conflict of interest and you know, they're shocked that that should be the case.

The report showed that over 80 percent of the paediatricians surveyed strongly disagreed with offshore processing. Dr Gunasekura says he's seen serious issues.

HASANTHA GUNASEKERA: We see children who are wetting the bed, who are not sleeping, who don't want to play with other children, pulling their hair out, who are having nightmares, who are not eating properly - so we see the physical manifestations of what they've been through. We're perpetuating those traumas and we're exacerbating them and that is the thing that concerns paediatricians. Children should not be treated like this. We cannot use any excuse for putting children through the trauma that they're going through.

Earlier this year, the immigration minister, Scott Morrison,  provided an undertaking to not send 26 Australian-born babies offshore after a law firm, Maurice Blackburn, threatened court action. The firm's principal, Jacob Varghese, says medical treatment offshore would have been inadequate.

JACOB VARGHESE: One of our criticisms is that even just on Christmas Island itself there's not sufficient health services to look after newborn babies. So they are seen by a medical service but they don't have access to specialists or the other type of allied health professionals that in New Zealand or Australia we would take for granted for our babies. Christmas Island, if you need to see a specialist, a dermatologist for example, because a lot of these kids have serious heat rashes from the humidity at Christmas Island, you can't just get a booking with a dermatologist easily.

The report comes a week after Scott Morrison announced that an investigation would be launched into claims of alleged sexual abuse at the Nauru detention centre. The investigation will be led by former integrity commissioner, Philip Moss.