"The ASRC [Asylum Seeker Resource Centre] needed a volunteer doctor and I said yes, thinking it would be easy work. In quick succession I saw a little boy with a broken arm, a distressed rape victim, a man with uncontrolled hypertension, and a woman with acute asthma, all of whom had been turned away from hospital. The nurse took the little boy to her doctor friend who would plaster his arm at home, and I rummaged through an old carton of supplies to find some antihypertensives and an inhaler. The rape victim fled, confirming that I was not the therapist she needed. I finished my first shift wistful for the controlled environment of my hospital but conflicted that it, and other hospitals, would deny care to sick patients."
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ColumnistsHarvard University alumniWomen from AustraliaPhysicians from AustraliaWomen journalists from Australia
Original Language: English
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The situation described was during the Tampa crisis when "Medicare-ineligible refugees and asylum seekers were routinely denied care in the public hospital system".
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ranjana_Srivastava
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Ranjana Srivastava
Ranjana Srivastava OAM (born 1974) is an Australian oncologist and author from Melbourne. She is a regular columnist for The Guardian newspaper, where she writes about the intersection between medicine and humanity, and a frequent essayist for the New England Journal of Medicine. She was a finalist for the Walkley Award for Excellence in Journalism in 2018.
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