The national press has now picked up on the story of Mohammed Ahmadi released last Friday by NCADC : "Unacceptable Death of a person seeking asylum"

It has added to nationwide concerns as to just how persons seeking asylum/over stayers/undocumented migrants will be treated by the NHS if Government proposals are implemented.

Medact is a global health charity that speaks out for countless people across the globe whose health, wellbeing and access to proper health care are severely compromised. Medact is running the petition below.

NCADC would ask you all to sign, get your friends to sign, and don’t forget to raise the issue in your trade union branch.

Access to Health Care for Vulnerable Migrants

www.ipetitions.com/petition/access/

We the undersigned strongly oppose the proposal that General Practitioners, and other primary care staff, be forced to charge refused asylum seekers or other undocumented migrants for NHS care. Any such requirement would:

• Deny vulnerable and often destitute individuals the chance to identify serious and sometimes life-threatening conditions which need immediate treatment
• Contribute to maternal and infant mortality by delaying or preventing access to maternity care
• Condemn many children to a life without primary healthcare, inevitably resulting for some in serious illness and death
• Increase the likelihood of serious communicable diseases such as TB and HIV going undiagnosed and being transmitted, thus endangering public health
• Remove an important source of support for women experiencing domestic abuse
• Increase avoidable costs to the NHS resulting from late diagnosis and additional administration, and increase avoidable admissions to hospital
• Overburden Accident and Emergency Departments both with those who should be treated (at significantly less cost) in primary care and with those who have become seriously ill because primary care was unavailable
• Deny GPs their current discretion to judge how best to meet the healthcare needs of their local population
• Breach basic international human rights obligations of the UK and entrench discrimination in the NHS

Medecins du Monde is organising a seminar on

"Proposed Changes on access to primary healthcare for undocumented migrants"

The seminar will discuss the Department of Health’s proposals on restricting access to primary healthcare for undocumented migrants, including refused asylum seekers. Adam Hundt will present a case which is testing access to secondary healthcare which will be judicially reviewed in April this year.

Speakers: Susan Wright, MdM UK director and Adam Hundt, Pierce Glynn Solicitors.

Date: 21 February 2008
Time: 6 pm
Venue: Clifford Chance, 10 Upper Bank Street, London E14 5JJ

Light refreshments will be available.

Booking essential. Please email

fizza@medecinsdumonde.org.uk

http://www.medecinsdumonde.org.uk/

Hospital defends treatment in asylum seeker death

A young asylum seeker with a heart condition died as doctors tried to establish whether he was entitled to free treatment on the NHS, it emerged today.

Friends and relatives, social workers and the man’s lawyer expressed concerns that Mohammed Ahmedi, who had a partner and a young child, may not have received the treatment he needed - and was entitled to - because his immigration status was unclear.

Gloucestershire Royal Infirmary (GRI), where Ahmedi died earlier this month after being treated there a number of times throughout January, insisted treatment was not withheld.

Full story: Steven Morris and Eric Allison,

The Guardian, 13/02/08

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/feb/13/nhs.immigrationandpublicservices

National Coalition of Anti-Deportation Campaigns (NCADC)
110 Hamstead Road
Birmingham
B20 2QS
www.ncadc.org.uk/