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LONDON, 27th April (RHC) Asylum seekers in the UK are lacking medical care in the facilities where the government is housing them while their cases are processed, NGO Doctors of the World said on Wednesday.
According to a study carried out by this institution in collaboration with the University of Birmingham, the plan to keep refugees in shelters is unsafe due to the lack of access to adequate health services.
Under current law, asylum seekers have the right to access the low-cost system of the National Health Service, but the bodies responsible for managing the facilities where they are housed are not obliged to assist them or register them with the care center, doctor, unless, its an emergency.
The report, published this Wednesday by Doctors of the World, specifically mentions the fall of some old military barracks on the outskirts of Folkestone in southern England.
Last March, following an arson attack and an outbreak of Covid-19 that affected around 200 asylum seekers, inspectors of the prison system declared that this camp lacked the minimum conditions to house these people and three months later the British judiciary ruled that the government was breaking the law by putting them there.
The release of the Doctors of the World report comes at a time when the UK authorities plan to tighten asylum policies through a law being debated in Parliament to prevent illegal entry of migrants via the English Channel.
Under the new legislation, immigration officials could detain asylum seekers indefinitely while considering sending them to processing centers in third countries. (Source:PL)