UK: Ama's deportation death an act of "atrocious barbarism"
01 August 2008
At the start of 2008 39-year old mother of two, Ama Sumani, was removed from the hospital bed where she was receiving critical treatment for cancer, and deported to Ghana for overstaying her visa. Ama, who was suffering from malignant myeloma and was receiving kidney dialysis at the University Hospital of Wales, died in Korle Bu hospital in Accra in March, two hours after friends phoned her to say that they had found a UK doctor willing to treat her condition and were going to apply for an emergency visa for her return to the UK. On her arrival in Ghana, Ama told the BBC she was unable to afford a three-month course of medical treatment and that drugs that would have extended her life were unavailable in the country.
Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights imposes a duty on the state to protect human life, but when flight BA081 left Heathrow airport on 9 January one of its passengers was facing a death sentence. Ama had earlier been seized from her hospital bed in Wales by several officers from the Border and Immigration Agency, before being taken in a wheelchair to be deported to Ghana where she was abandoned, unable to afford the hospital treatment she desperately needed. She told a BBC reporter that when she went to the Korle Bu hospital they asked for $6,000 (4,000 euros) to cover three months treatment.
In an editorial the medical journal,
The Lancet, has described Ama's deportation as an act of "atrocious barbarism":
"To stop treating patients in the knowledge that they are being sent home to die is an unacceptable breach of the duties of any health professional...The UK has committed an act of atrocious barbarism. It is time for doctors' leaders to say so, forcefully and uncompromisingly". (cited in The Times 20.3.08)
The journal also attacked the "deafening silence" from doctors' leaders and published a petition, signed by 275 doctors, calling on the government to reject proposed regulations that would abolish the right of failed asylum seekers to seek medical help in Britain through the NHS.
However, the Border and Immigration agency officials told the House of Commons' All Party Home Affairs Select Committee that deporting those undergoing crucial medical treatment to a country where they would not be able to access similar care, could not be defined as inhumane treatment. Lin Homer, the chief executive of the Borders and Immigration Agency, defended the deportation, claiming that the courts had ruled that a deportation could only be halted only in "very rare and extreme cases" - the threat of death and serious illness, presumably falling short of these criteria according to her interpretation.
Ms Homer told the Committee that:
"The standard of medical care in this country and the access to it is sufficiently higher than in so many countries, not just third world or developing countries...If we vary from that point there are many, many tens of thousands who would be able to argue that. We see many cases where the medical prognosis for an individual would be less good in their home country."
Homer's view, that maintaining the UK's high standards of medical care should not be undermined by actually treating patients, particularly those from countries with poorer medical standards who can be deported, stands in opposition to the view expressed in
The Lancet editorial, which argued that:
"To stop treating patients in the knowledge that they are being sent home to die is an unacceptable breach of the duties of any health professional."
Following Ama's death a concert was held in Cardiff in March to raise funds to help her orphaned children, Mary (16) and Samede (7) - the event was originally scheduled to boost the fund set up to prolong their mother's life.
Guardian 16, 20.1.08; BBC News 17.1.08, 22.3.08