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News/Event Item
Helping Health Providers Treat Trafficking Victims
Nov. 4, 2008
Health providers – frequently the first professional a trafficking victim consults for help – are often thrust into the fight against organised crime without adequate preparation, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM). The agency says there is an urgent need to ensure care for trafficking victims and hopes to fill the gap with its soon-to-be released guidelines for health workers.
Expected by the end of December, the global guidelines are intended to help health providers identify and treat victims of trafficking. A panel of experts in health and human trafficking has been collaborating on ways to instruct health providers about the dangers of treating victims of trafficking – persons who are recruited or transported to work under coercive, abusive conditions, according to the UN.
Cathy Zimmerman, the guidelines’ lead researcher who specialises in health and human trafficking at the London School for Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, told IRIN that prosecuting traffickers has had a higher priority than treating their victims. “The focus has been on training police [and] immigration officials and lost in the mix has been health care for the victims. There are all sorts of global manuals for law enforcement, but nothing on the basics of care and treatment of trafficking victims.”
© IRIN 2008
For full article, visit:
http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=81296
category: News from Other Sources : General Health News
contributed by Liza Nanni on 17 November 2008
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