The BMA has criticised the hardening attitude to asylum seekers in Britain in its new handbook on human rights for doctors. In The Medical Profession and Human Rights: Handbook for a Changing Agenda the association criticises the way that the dispersal system has been managed, arguing this cuts asylum seekers off from support and advice from existing refugee groups. Many primary care doctors are struggling to cope with vulnerable people who arrive without warning, planning, or language support, it says. And they are confronted with people claiming to have suffered torture, rape, or severe physical and psychological trauma. The handbook is designed for international as well as domestic audiences and looks at the wide variety of human rights violations that doctors may encounter and at practical steps that doctors can take to prevent, detect, deter, and publicise abuse. The BMA believes that nearly every violation of human rights is relevant to medicine because all have a negative impact on human health. Doctors may be the only independent observers who see what is going on in a prison, detention centre, or war zone.
