Gunnai Gunditjmara and Djab Wurrung independent Senator Lidia Thorpe has joined calls from medical experts for incarcerated people to have equal access to healthcare.
A March report by the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee, appointed by the federal government to review medicines for the PBS, recommended that people in prison have equal access to medicines available to the broader community.
Thorpe said on May 1 the recommendation was welcome and that “access to PBS [Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme] medicines will save lives”.
Thorpe has previously called on the government to deliver better healthcare in the prison system, including allowing prisoners to access the Medicare, National Disability Insurance Scheme and PBS available to the public.
“People are dying from preventative health conditions in prisons,” she said. “They can’t access the same screenings, medications and therapies that they normally could in the community. These changes would save lives.”
First Nations people are the most incarcerated people on the planet, and the lack of access to healthcare therefore disproportionately affects them.
Many of the recommendations made by the 1991 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody aimed to improve healthcare in prisons; most have still not been implemented.
The stress of being in prison has been found to lead to higher rates of complex mental health issues and chronic illnesses.
This comes on top of the reported 40% of people who enter the prison system with an underlying mental illness.
The lack of access to healthcare in prisons undoubtedly worsens these conditions, making the transition back into the community much harder.
Numerous deaths in custody have been linked to the inadequate provision of healthcare.
A coronial inquest in 2021 found the death of Wonnarua man Danny Whitton in 2015 was due to “suboptimal care” in custody.
Whitton fell ill in a NSW prison and died a few days later in excruciating pain from acute paracetamol poisoning.
The Aboriginal Legal Service NSW/ACT (ALS) condemned the lack of healthcare in prisons. “A prison sentence should not be a death sentence, but substandard prison healthcare is taking Aboriginal lives. People behind bars are dying of asthma attacks, paracetamol overdoses and ear infections” Sarah Crellin, a spokesperson from ALS said.
“These are standard health issues that we would not accept as fatal in the community, so why are they fatal in prisons?”
Thorpe echoed this saying: “Healthcare is a human right and governments must stop picking and choosing whose human rights they are willing to observe. Prisoners are people with families, and no one deserves to die or suffer from preventable causes.”