Inquiry into children in detention hears nurses were ‘popping pills from new arrivals straight into the bin’
A policy of stripping asylum seekers of basic medications when they arrive at off-shore detention centres caused a three-year-old girl to suffer repeated seizures, an Australian Human Rights Commission inquiry has heard.
Another asylum seeker had parts of a prosthetic leg removed, while glasses and hearing aids were also seized and couldn’t be reclaimed without considerable efforts by medical staff, the National Inquiry into Children in Immigration Detention was told on Thursday.
“This was a major problem,” said Dr John Paul Sanggaran, who worked at Christmas Island detention centre in 2013.
“One of the more concerning, systematic things I saw was a couple of nurses standing around a garbage bin popping pills from a boat of new arrivals straight into the bin, with no records being taken of whose medication they were.”
Another doctor working at Christmas Island at the same time, Grant Fergusson, said a three-year-old girl had medications stripped from her when she arrived and started to have fits shortly afterwards.
After her medications were destroyed, health services on Christmas Island could only provide her with one of the two medications she needed.
“She started having seizures,” Fergusson said. “She was left on that one medication.
“We eventually got supply of that medication she arrived with, but they only ordered a month’s worth so in a few weeks time they ran out and she was back to one [medication] again, and this whole time she was having seizures.”
He said a third medication was tried and the girl was eventually transferred off the island after a long wait and repeated requests by medical staff.
The doctor also described intense time pressures in making medical assessments of asylum seekers.
“There was one doctor who somewhat braggingly mentioned that in an eight-hour shift he had gone through 90 people,” he said.
The hearings continue.