Medical facilities on Manus Island need attention

PAPUA NEW GUINEA – Australia must build and staff a hospital on Manus Island to prevent refugees from dying in the future, the Papua New Guinea politician who represents the island says.

On Christmas Eve, 27-year-old Sudanese man Faysal Ishak Ahmed, who had been evacuated from Manus Island after suffering seizures, became the fourth refugee detained on the island to die.

Ahmed was taken by air ambulance to Brisbane on Friday, but died in hospital on Saturday.

The Department of Immigration said in a statement he had suffered a seizure and afall.

The processing centre on the island houses close to 900 refugees and the local MP Ronnie Knight said the situation there was increasingly tense.

“We really find it hard to believe that this is going on in this day and age in this country,” he said.

Knight said he was extremely frustrated following the death of a fourth refugee.

“It doesn’t reflect back well on my people and my province,” he said.

“Originally it was supposed to be a township out there, but it’s just a big military-style barracks.”

Knight said they had originally been told that a “decent hospital” would be built.

“And the amount of money that is being paid for those people out there, you would think by now they would have a decent health system out there and a couple of competent doctors or something to keep this sort of thing from happening,” he said.

“And if they are misdiagnosing calls like this, what does this hold for other refugees in the future?”

Knight said it needed to be done urgently.

“Why don’t they just spend some money and upgrade the local hospital and staff it properly and bring it to the stage it was when the Australian navy was there?

“We even had a diving chamber there for people that had got the bends. These are things that we need to look at.

“Is it cheaper for them to just until it gets to the position where they have to medivac a person for hundreds of thousands of kina, than have a proper staff hospital that can take care of them on the spot?”

Knight said he did not have much hope a propsoed US deal to take refugees would lead to the closure of the facility.

“Our hopes were pinned on this American deal that was supposed to happen and we were told that in early January, or mid January, most of them would be repatriated to the United States,” he said.

“Now I can see that’s probably just more propaganda to keep people placid and just while the time away.”

There have been three other refugees from Manus Island who have died. Reza Barati, 23, died following protests inside the Manus detention centre in 2014. Hamid Kehazaei, an Iranian asylum seeker, died in a Brisbane hospital in September 2014.

- ABC