By Chris Spindler
SYDNEY — A group of overseas trained doctors are on a hunger strike to protest discrimination against them. The Australian Doctors Trained Overseas Association (ADTOA) is trying to counter a sustained campaign by the government and the Australian Medical Association to keep more than 1200 overseas trained doctors out of the medical profession in this country.
All overseas trained doctors are World Health Organisation accredited and internationally registered. Many have years of experience and qualifications that have been accepted and recognised by the Australian government and universities.
Australia is experiencing a shortage of 4000 doctors, which is adversely affecting rural areas, hospitals and community medicine in particular. The federal government is advertising for 2500 medical practitioners overseas to alleviate the crisis, but overseas trained doctors already in Australia are not permitted to apply. The government wants only foreign doctors with temporary work visas. Such applicants, when given jobs, are exempt from the assessment process.
The ADTOA calls the ban on overseas trained doctors in Australia racist because it applies overwhelmingly to non-Anglo background people: "The lack of employment causes pain, suffering and poverty. It denies our place in society and causes us to be treated as second-class citizens.
"The worst part is that this discrimination is fundamentally institutional in nature. Australian medical institutions are dominated by an existing male Anglo-Saxon hegemony."
The hunger strike was a last resort after years of negotiation with government bodies failed. The strikers' aim is to attract attention in Australia and internationally to their demand that their qualifications be recognised. They are demanding their right to work, an end to discrimination against them and that they be assimilated into the Australian medical system with a nationally accredited bridging course. They are also asking to be employed before foreign guest workers.