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March 20th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda Darwin’s main hospital is under strain from asylum seekers needing treatment, some with chronic anxiety, the peak doctors body says.
Dr Paul Bauert, president of the Australian Medical Association (AMA) in the NT, says three to five asylum seekers turn up at Royal Darwin Hospital’s emergency department each day.
‘They are all complicated cases, because virtually all of them will have some mental health issue,’ Dr Bauert said.
He said some of the patients had serious psychiatric illnesses.
Others had chronic anxiety, manifested in symptoms such as abdominal pain or chest pain, which became worse after they were returned to detention centres following treatment.
‘The longer they are detained, the more likely these mental health issues are going to become permanent and we end up producing permanently damaged Australian citizens,’ Dr Bauert said.
Because of the difficulty in treating the patients and the need for interpreters, each asylum seeker tended to take up at least double the resources used by a typical patient, he said.
People housed in Darwin’s two main detention centres were coming to hospital every week after harming themselves, Dr Bauert said.
Last year a Senate inquiry into mandatory detention heard a nine-year-old asylum seeker in Darwin had attempted suicide.
Dr Bauert called on Immigration Minister Chris Bowen and Health Minister Tanya Plibersek to visit the hospital to see for themselves what was happening.
‘Nothing seems to change, and I just think it is a bit of (a case of) out of sight, out of mind, on the part of minister Bowen and Tanya Plibersek,’ he said.
Royal Darwin would not comment on the matter, citing its policy of not commenting on matters concerning asylum seekers.
A spokeswoman for Mr Bowen said the government was concerned about mental health issues in immigration detention.
‘People in detention will be taken to Royal Darwin Hospital when they are medically assessed as requiring emergency or specialist health services for various health complaints,’ she said.
A spokesman for Ms Plibersek said the federal government was committed to ensuring the NT had the resources needed to meet the demands of its health system.
‘Under the government’s new funding arrangements an additional $150 million is being directed to NT hospitals in the 2011/12 financial year,’ he said.
Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young said there was a mental health crisis in detention centres.
‘Rising levels of self-harm and trauma are directly linked to the long-term and indefinite detention of asylum seekers,’ she said.
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