Arabic version: مخاوف بشأن وصول سجناء الإقليم الشمالي إلى الرعاية الصحية

According to ABC News, custodial doctors and a senior lawyer have raised concerns that adult and youth prisoners in the Northern Territory’s Top End are struggling to access healthcare and medication. Two doctors working in Darwin and across the Top End told a Centre for Disease Control conference in Darwin that rising prisoner numbers create major challenges in caring for patients.

The latest data cited by ABC News shows the NT prison population rose from about 1,800 people in 2021 to more than 2,800 in June last year. A long-standing prison doctor said staffing pressures at Darwin Correctional Centre had affected practitioners’ ability to see patients. Prisoners generally need at least two officers for external medical appointments, she said, making escorts time-consuming and sometimes requiring appointments to be cancelled when too many people need to go out in one day.

The doctor said health workers could not always see patients on demand, including in youth detention, and that this caused “moral injury” to health and corrections staff. She said that on some days, very few people on medical lists were seen even when they had been marked high priority. Moral injury can occur when someone experiences psychological, social or spiritual damage after being forced into a situation that violates their morals.

Senior Darwin lawyer and former NT Bar Association president John Lawrence SC said prisoners and their families had repeatedly reported missed medication and difficulty seeing doctors. He described conditions in NT correctional facilities as affected by “gross overcrowding” and said, in his opinion, health obligations were not being fulfilled. A Department of Corrections spokesperson said escort arrangements vary by prisoner circumstances, staffing and activities are managed daily for safe operations, and the department works with NT Health to support safe and timely access to treatment. NT Health did not respond by deadline.