The independent health advice panel overseeing medical transfers for asylum seekers languishing offshore says there were 73 admissions covering 43 people at the RPC Medical Centre on Nauru in the first quarter of 2019, with “the majority” relating to mental health conditions.
The first quarterly report of the independent panel, obtained by Labor under an order for the production of documents in the Senate, found that in addition to the 73 admissions, with stays ranging between one and 44 days, there were 8,260 medical consultations provided to people on Nauru in the quarter – mostly for mental health problems.
The new figures underscoring significant problems with the mental health and wellbeing of asylum seekers, and people whose asylum claims have failed, came as the Liberal backbencher Russell Broadbent declared on Monday Australia could not continue with “indefinite detention”.
The governor of Manus Island, Charlie Benjamin, also urged Australia to “step up” and help resettle refugees from his province to a third country.
The panel’s report says 5,908 consultations to 237 people were provided at the Nauru regional processing centre medical centre, and 2,352 at the IHMS Nauru settlement medical centre, for a range of conditions, but “the commonest reason for consultation was for psychological reasons”.
In Papua New Guinea, the report says, there were 1,134 primary health consultations, 472 mental health consultations and 375 specialist consultations performed at East Lorengau refugee transit centre at Manus in the first three months of 2019. There were 21 admissions to Lorengau general hospital for 17 people, again predominantly for mental health conditions.
During a visit to Canberra, Benjamin said the “uncomfortable” situation on Manus required urgent action. “We want their travel to come to an end, they have to find a place to go to, but I think the onus is really on Australia, because they [the refugees] don’t want to be in Papua New Guinea,” he said.
Responding to a renewed offer from New Zealand at the weekend to resettle 150 people in offshore detention, Broadbent told the ABC on Monday the home affairs minister Peter Dutton was “trying to find a solution”.
But the Liberal moderate said he would “like to see the government pursue issues that would go towards … there being nobody left on Manus Island and nobody left on Nauru in indefinite detention”.
Broadbent said many Australians “thought we had dealt with indefinite detention under the Howard government” and he suggested people should contact the prime minister and Dutton “to say this is how we feel”.
“It often takes a catalyst of an individual issue to be raised around indefinite detention,” Broadbent said. “I just find it personally unacceptable for the nation that we are, for the free and wonderful nation that we are … and we have to take every opportunity that is there to remove these people from indefinite detention.”
The Morrison government is expected this week to proceed in the House of Representatives with a bill repealing the medevac procedures overseen by the independent health panel – arrangements imposed on the government last year by the crossbench during the period when the Coalition governed in minority.
But the repeal will be the subject of a Senate inquiry. The Senate’s legal and constitutional legislative committee will report in late October, which means the earliest the regime could be scrapped is the parliamentary sittings in November.
One of the key kingmakers in the Senate, the Centre Alliance crossbench senator Stirling Griff, has put the Morrison government on notice that repealing the medical evacuations bill would “sully the relationship” between himself and the Coalition.
The panel notes in its first assessment there are “reasonable quality primary and secondary care” services on Nauru “supplemented on a periodic basis by the availability of specialist services”. It notes on Nauru there are 53 contracted health professionals, including 23 mental health professionals.
It says there are significant numbers of mental health workers on Nauru but “there is no access to high-quality inpatient psychiatric care in Nauru and patients with severe mental illness and at high risk of suicide should be transferred to a hospital with appropriate inpatient psychiatric care”.
At the time the report was written the panel said they intended to visit Nauru in September to “more fully understand the scope of health services”.
The panel said it was “impressed” with the facilities offered at the hospital at Port Moresby and was “reasonably confident” that acute inpatient mental health treatment could be provided, but it also noted there was no access to electroconvulsive therapy of psychiatric intensive care for patients.
