A 12-year-old refugee on Nauru who has refused all food and medical treatment for more than 20 days is being moved to Australia with his whole family.
M (Guardian Australia has chosen not to publish his name) was early yesterday afternoon medevacked from Nauru by air ambulance with his mother, stepfather and sister.
The Australian Border Force (ABF) initially refused to move M with his family, insisting that his stepfather stay on Nauru.
However, after M refused to leave without his family, and after several failed attempts to move him — first on commercial flights and then by air ambulance — the ABF acquiesced and allowed the whole family to travel.
M was gravely ill and would have died within days without medical intervention, sources told Guardian Australia.
A medical assessment conducted on Sunday said that M was “reaching a critical time.”
“He is now at day 19 of food refusal,” his treating doctor wrote. “Likewise apart from sips of water and the ... dextrose solution that he was given, he has not had any significant oral hydration. His last bowel motion was 15+ days ago and he rarely passes dribbles of urine.”
Doctors on Nauru refused to restrain or sedate M to forcibly feed and hydrate him, saying that it was unethical, and that the ABF must accept clinical recommendations that the child be moved to a hospital off the island.
The 12-year-old boy weighs just 36kg and is so weakened that he cannot stand up or sit.
M had been held on Nauru since he was eight.
M and his family, who fled persecution in their native Iran, have all been recognized as refugees. They are legally owed protection by Australia.
“This whole thing has been inhumane and unnecessary,” a medical source said. “They’ve prolonged this transfer, compromising him medically even further.”
The department does not comment on individual cases,” an Australian Department of Home Affairs spokesperson said.
The situation is “dangerously chaotic” on Nauru, government sources said, with tensions increasingly fraught around the health of refugee children.
A steady flow of children are being removed from the island — one by one — through court challenges being brought in the federal court in Australia.
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