Helping health providers treat victims of trafficking

DAKAR, 4 November 2008 (IRIN) - 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.”

Zimmerman said this is a “huge gap” because health providers' instincts might put them and their patients at danger: “What do you do if you are working in an emergency room setting and a girl comes in because of haemorrhaging? She has had a miscarriage, shows signs of being abused, is under age and you suspect she is being held captive. Your first instinct might be to sneak in the back and call the police. But what if the police are complicit and part of the [smuggling] network? What if it was the police who brought her over the border?”

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