Scores of asylum seeker families might be sent back to Nauru if a High Court challenge against the legality of Australia's involvement in the immigration detention centre there fails. - See more at: http://www.skynews.com.au/news/top-stories/2016/02/03/high-court-to-rule-on-nauru-detention.html#sthash.edi1KGL3.dpuf
Scores of asylum seeker families might be sent back to Nauru if a High Court challenge against the legality of Australia's involvement in the immigration detention centre there fails. - See more at: http://www.skynews.com.au/news/top-stories/2016/02/03/high-court-to-rule-on-nauru-detention.html#sthash.edi1KGL3.dpuf
Today the High Court will decide if scores of asylum seekers will be sent back to Nauru, despite calls from experts that the conditions are inhumane.
The ruling will have implications for more than 267 people, including 37 babies and 54 older children who were brought to Australia for medical treatment.
Dr Karen Zwi has treated several children on the island and said the government's process of deteining asylum seekers needs to change.
"The system is itself at fault," she told ABC Radio National.
"Do we need to essentially torture people who arrived 445 days ago for something that could be resolved in much more humane ways?
"We've seen that the vast majority of people in detention, and children in detention, do not cope and consider it cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment - and so do external agencies."
Dr Zwi treated the five-year-old boy allegedly raped on the island.
"When horrific things happen to people, there is always hope for recovery, but what they need is somebody to listen, somebody to beleive and somebody to provide a thereputic environment," she said.
"I'm afraid that's not necasarrily what happens to people who have experienced trauma in places in Nauru."
"There isn't very good medical treatment, very poor mental health services."
