Date: 21 January 2010
Source: Human Rights Watch press release
Health providers in medical facilities, juvenile detention centers, orphanages, drug treatment centres, and so-called social rehabilitation centres are forced to withhold care or engage in treatment that intentionally or negligently inflicts severe pain or suffering for no legitimate medical purpose, according to an essay in the Human Rights Watch 612-page 2010 World Report. The 20th annual review of human rights practices around the globe summarises major human rights trends in more than 90 nations and territories.
The essay documented health providers' complicity in torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment in many countries throughout the world, including:
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Government physicians conducting forcible anal exams of men suspected of engaging in homosexual activity in Egypt and forcible vaginal exams to assess virginity in Libya and Jordan.
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The practice of female genital mutilation by lay midwives in Iraqi Kurdistan, and government physicians promoting the practice and disputing negative health consequences.
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Staff at drug "treatment" centres in China and Cambodia denying care for drug users in withdrawal and subjecting individuals dependent upon drugs to forced labour or exercise in place of evidence-based treatment.
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Physicians in Nicaragua denying women life-saving abortions, resulting in preventable deaths.
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Health providers in India withholding pain medicine for those suffering from severe, chronic pain.
Healthcare providers are often constrained by government action or inaction to provide care that violates international standards. In Nicaragua, for example, physicians risk criminal charges if they perform life-saving abortions. In India, the government has failed to take measures to ensure the availability and access to appropriate pain medications. In China, the government has expanded access to substitution therapy for individuals with drug dependency in community-based clinics but not in drug rehabilitation centres. Health providers must understand how their actions can result in torture and ill-treatment, and speak out more forcefully against laws and practices that compel health providers to be complicit. The international human rights protection system must also address state-sponsored torture and ill-treatment in medical settings.
The full essay can be found here
