Talk:Australian Immigration denies issuing banned drug

Original reporting notes

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The DIMIA release is now available from their website, and so I removed that as well.

Simeon 06:57, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Press release from ASRC

URGENT – DIMIA MUST STOP VIOXX ON NAURU

MEDIA RELEASE EMBARGOED UNTIL 6am 12/04/05

The Immigration Department is putting asylum seeker’s lives at risk with the continued use of the drug, Vioxx. This drug was banned world wide, in October 2004, because of reports linking it to heart attacks, high blood pressure and death. Emails were sent to the International Organisation of Migration (IOM) in January 2005 when advocates realised that asylum seekers on Nauru were still being given this dangerous drug. IOM run the camps under orders and with funding from DIMIA.

IOM told refugee advocates in January that they had removed Vioxx from the shelves and that no detainees on Nauru would be given these drugs.

“In the past three weeks a woman transferred from Nauru to Australia for medical care was found to be still taking VIOXX. She was given the drug in the Maribyrnong Detention Centre. ‘It took a phone call to the Ministers office to stop the administration of this drug.” says Pamela Curr of the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre (ASRC) “Inadequate care for asylum seekers is so normalised in the detention centres that the doctors contracted by the detention system continued to administer a banned drug.”

“We know that asylum seekers on Nauru are still being given Vioxx”, says Curr of the ASRC Melbourne. “This is the second time they have been asked to stop this dangerous practice.”

Standards of medical care on Nauru have been an on-going problem with the unexplained death in September 2003 of Mohammed Sarwar, a previously healthy 26 year old Afghan refugee from the Tampa. At the time DIMIA said that he died of natural causes, although it did not release the details of a post-mortem. “It is a nonsense to claim that any 26 year old dies from natural causes, “ says Curr. ” The treatment of people in detention is secretive with lawyers forced to resort to legal proceedings to access medical records for asylum seekers.”

The Australian government strictly controls all access to detainees on Nauru including medical and legal. In January 2004 the Australian government pressured Nauru’s government to block Australian doctors visiting asylum seekers in the Australian-financed detention camp on the remote Pacific Island.