Canadian health providers protest cuts to refugee health

Carlos Osorio/Toronto Star

Canadian Minister of Citizenship and Immigration and Multiculturalism, Jason Kenney, has tabled sweeping changes to the Interim Federal Health Program (IFHP), which provides health insurance for refugees who arrive in Canada.  At present the IFHP provides medical coverage to refugees and refugee claimants that is similar to that provided by provincial health coverage plans.  The changes would mean that refugees and refugee claimants would be denied access to essential medical coverage and preventive care. An excellent breakdown of the details of the changes can be found here. 

Health providers and numerous organizations across the country have voiced their opposition to the cuts to refugee healthcare.  On May 11th Canadian physicians protested at the office of Mp Joe Oliver in a bid to draw attention to the impending cuts. Major healthcare providers, including the Canadian Medical Association and the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada have written an open letter to Jason Kenney highlighting the deleterious effects of the changes and asking him to rescind this decision.  The Wellesley Institute conducted a Health Equity Impact Assessment (HEIA) of the proposed changes to the IFPH which concluded that the negative health impacts of the planned changes to the IFHP will be severe and inequitable. Women and children will be at particular risk of adverse consequences.  Ontario nurses have even said that people may end up losing their life due to the loss of coverage

Dr. Philip Berger, head of the Department of Family and Community Medicine at St. Michael’s Hospital called the changes inhumane. To illustrate his point he cited the example of one of the reforms which says that persons from countries deemed to be ‘safe’ (called Designated Countries of Origin) will not receive coverage for heart attacks. Health providers have stressed that a lack of primary and preventive care will lead to people reaching emergency rooms sicker and potentially posing a greater public health hazard. By increasing costs for hospital emergency departments and by extension the provincial government, these cuts threaten to affect the health care access of all Canadians. 

June 18 has been declared a national day of protest against the cuts to refugee healthcare.

Societies are judged by how they treat their most vulnerable. Refugees are some of the most traumatize members of our communities.  Targeting them in such a narrow-minded way does not represent what Canada should be standing for.

doctorswithoutborders: Dadaab Briefing Paper: Back to Square One In the Dadaab camps of northerastern Kenya, which collectively form the largest refugee camp in the world, life is becoming more difficult every day and hundreds of thousands of refugees are facing a humanitarian emergency. Their health is at risk of deteriorating rapidly but humanitarian aid agencies are struggling to provide meaningful assistance on an ongoing basis. The relocation of families to the newly opened camps of Ifo 2 West and Ifo 2 East continues, but work to ensure sufficient services has been slow to restart. Today, a limited number of people remain on the outskirts of the camps in so-called “self-settled areas,” where living conditions are still extremely poor. Such conditions have profound consequences for the health of these refugees, as confirmed in a detailed survey conducted by MSF’s epidemiological branch, Epicentre, in September 2011. The health situation in Dadaab is alarming, with recent outbreaks of measles, acute watery diarrhea, and cholera. MSF continues to run its hospital and four health posts in Dadaab’s Dagahaley camp. At the height of the emergency, from October 2011 to January 2012, the 300-bed hospital in Dagahaley was operating beyond its capacity, reaching a peak of more than 350 patients in the first week of January. Today the situation has improved and medical activities have been restored in Ifo 2 [Somali refugee camp]. However, the number of severely malnourished children requiring hospitalization is still high compared to the same period last year, with nearly 100 children being admitted to the intensive therapeutic feeding center every week. MSF is constantly adapting to the exceptionally difficult humanitarian and security challenges in the camps. Despite limited international presence in the camp due to security concerns, MSF staff are still providing high quality medical care. Photo:Kenya 2011 © Brendan Bannon - Somali refugees settle at the edge of Dadaab, the world’s largest refugee camp.
Pop-upView Separately

doctorswithoutborders:

Dadaab Briefing Paper: Back to Square One

In the Dadaab camps of northerastern Kenya, which collectively form the largest refugee camp in the world, life is becoming more difficult every day and hundreds of thousands of refugees are facing a humanitarian emergency. Their health is at risk of deteriorating rapidly but humanitarian aid agencies are struggling to provide meaningful assistance on an ongoing basis.

The relocation of families to the newly opened camps of Ifo 2 West and Ifo 2 East continues, but work to ensure sufficient services has been slow to restart. Today, a limited number of people remain on the outskirts of the camps in so-called “self-settled areas,” where living conditions are still extremely poor. Such conditions have profound consequences for the health of these refugees, as confirmed in a detailed survey conducted by MSF’s epidemiological branch, Epicentre, in September 2011. The health situation in Dadaab is alarming, with recent outbreaks of measles, acute watery diarrhea, and cholera.

MSF continues to run its hospital and four health posts in Dadaab’s Dagahaley camp. At the height of the emergency, from October 2011 to January 2012, the 300-bed hospital in Dagahaley was operating beyond its capacity, reaching a peak of more than 350 patients in the first week of January. Today the situation has improved and medical activities have been restored in Ifo 2 [Somali refugee camp]. However, the number of severely malnourished children requiring hospitalization is still high compared to the same period last year, with nearly 100 children being admitted to the intensive therapeutic feeding center every week.

MSF is constantly adapting to the exceptionally difficult humanitarian and security challenges in the camps. Despite limited international presence in the camp due to security concerns, MSF staff are still providing high quality medical care.

Photo:Kenya 2011 © Brendan Bannon - Somali refugees settle at the edge of Dadaab, the world’s largest refugee camp.

Doctors Without Borders: Malnutrition among arrivals at Dadaab refugee camp

doctorswithoutborders:

In an assessment on the outskirts of one of Dadaab’s camp sites, MSF teams found extremely high malnutrition rates among new arrivals, including:

  • 37.7 percent rate of global acute malnutrition
  • 17.5 percent rate of severe acute malnutrition
  • 43.3 percent of children aged five to 10 were…

The largest refugee camp in the world continues to get bigger

As the drought affecting East Africa forces more people to take to the road, many of them are making their way to the refugee camp of Dadaab in Kenya. Dadaab, which is actually comprised of three separate camps, Dagahaley, Hagadera and Ifo, is the largest refugee camp in the world. Established in 1992 in northeastern Kenya to house refugees escaping the civil war in Somalia, Dadaab was meant to accommodate up to 90,000 people. There are now more than 350,000 people packed into the camp, with new arrivals continuing to pour in each day. With nearly 1400 people arriving at the camp daily, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) estimates that the camp’s population will increase to 450,000 by the end of this year.

Many of the newcomers arriving at Dadaab have walked for days and are dehydrated and malnourished. 80 percent of new arrivals are women and children. According to MSF it takes approximately 12 days for newly arrived refugees to receive their first ration of food. As the camp’s population surges, the provision of essential services such as healthcare, water and sanitation is becoming increasingly challenging.  UNHCR figures indicate that mortality among children under five at the camp has trebled in the last few months.

 Life for the residents of the camp is difficult and prospects are bleak. The Kenyan government does not honour any of the rights of refugees laid out in the UN’s 1951 convention on refugees. The camp’s residents are physically confined within the camp and face fines, detention and forcible repatriation if caught outside without permits. This leaves refugees with little hope of ever finding employment or integrating into Kenyan society.