Health of refugees in Australia

The health of refugees has generally been regarded as the health of people in “camps” in far-off places like Pakistan, Iran, Sudan, or Kenya. However, this book looks at refugee health from an Australian community perspective. We are brought very quickly from the view of the refugee as “the other”, “the stranger”, “the queue jumper” or “the legitimate refugee” and “the asylum seeker” to see them as people who live in our community, but are often excluded as legitimate members of it. By focusing on this minority within Australia from a public health perspective, our national responsibilities in helping to solve this global health problem are brought into sharp contrast.

The book begins with a very good overview of the general health problems faced by those forced to migrate, and moves rapidly to focus on the specific health needs faced by refugee and asylum seekers in Australia. We begin to see this marginalised group as a vibrant resource to be nurtured, rather than one to be further excluded, persecuted and denigrated. This book provides us with timely and detailed health data which could be used to develop a rational refugee health policy. We are also given new data on the long-term effects of forced migration on the many children, accompanied and unaccompanied, who become caught up in these situations. We are asked to play a creative and healing role in this trauma cycle rather than exacerbating the damage.

The tension between specialised service funding models and the ability for broader integrated mainstream services to adequately meet the health needs of minority groups is dealt with in the book. There are no easy answers offered, but it focuses on the need for building reasonable and auditable capacity into mainstream services, and so offer hope that better-integrated and more grassroots, community-based healthcare will be developed in the future. The building of cooperative approaches with advocacy groups, volunteers, asylum seekers and refugees, to work with mainstream health services to assess their capacity to respond to individual health needs and to work out creative solutions, stands well with current thinking worldwide on building integrated health partnerships.

This book presents many excellent vignettes that make it fascinating and powerful reading. It also provides well-researched references gleaned from those who have built up expertise in refugee and asylum seeker health over recent years in Australia.

Based on the information in this book we could, as a nation, develop a refugee healthcare policy to be proud of, and we could show leadership in our region and provide an example to other nations. This book provides food for thought on our public health policies on many levels and is highly recommended as a very practical manual for action. It is an excellent book for anyone with an interest in health, social justice and human rights.

Rohan VoraEx-convenor, Brisbane Refugee and Asylum Seeker Health Network Registrar in Palliative Medicine, Brisbane, QLD