LONDON: Workers in Britain’s health service have little idea how to identify or help people who have been trafficked, though many think they have had contact with trafficking victims, researchers said.
Some 87 percent of National Health Service staff quizzed by researchers from two London universities did not know what questions to ask to identify trafficking victims, and almost four-fifths said they lacked the training needed to help such people.
“Medical professionals are the ones that come into contact with people who have been trafficked,” said Jakub Sobik, a spokesman for Anti-Slavery, a British human rights charity. “It’s a very delicate situation”.
One in eight of those questioned reported contact with someone they knew or suspected to have been trafficked, rising to one in five for those working in maternity care.
The academics, from Kings College London and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, recommended special training for those working in areas where contact with trafficked people is likely, such as maternity care, mental health, paediatrics and emergency medicine.
“You’re essentially looking for people who might be showing signs of abuse or neglect, so that might be physical injury or sexual abuse,” said co-author Siân Oram from King’s College. Another warning sign is if a dominating companion makes the patient reluctant to speak freely, Oram said.
NHS workers “lack confidence in how to respond appropriately” if they recognise someone is a trafficking victim, said the study, published by the online British medical journal BMJ Open.
Midwives, assistants and other support staff were questioned as well as doctors and nurses. “It’s something that a receptionist might pick up, it’s something a porter might pick up,” Oram told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
In 2014, 2,340 suspected trafficking victims in Britain were passed to the National Referral Mechanism (NRM), a government scheme for identifying and supporting victims of human trafficking, up 34 percent from the previous year.
REUTERS
LONDON: Workers in Britain’s health service have little idea how to identify or help people who have been trafficked, though many think they have had contact with trafficking victims, researchers said.
Some 87 percent of National Health Service staff quizzed by researchers from two London universities did not know what questions to ask to identify trafficking victims, and almost four-fifths said they lacked the training needed to help such people.
“Medical professionals are the ones that come into contact with people who have been trafficked,” said Jakub Sobik, a spokesman for Anti-Slavery, a British human rights charity. “It’s a very delicate situation”.
One in eight of those questioned reported contact with someone they knew or suspected to have been trafficked, rising to one in five for those working in maternity care.
The academics, from Kings College London and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, recommended special training for those working in areas where contact with trafficked people is likely, such as maternity care, mental health, paediatrics and emergency medicine.
“You’re essentially looking for people who might be showing signs of abuse or neglect, so that might be physical injury or sexual abuse,” said co-author Siân Oram from King’s College. Another warning sign is if a dominating companion makes the patient reluctant to speak freely, Oram said.
NHS workers “lack confidence in how to respond appropriately” if they recognise someone is a trafficking victim, said the study, published by the online British medical journal BMJ Open.
Midwives, assistants and other support staff were questioned as well as doctors and nurses. “It’s something that a receptionist might pick up, it’s something a porter might pick up,” Oram told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
In 2014, 2,340 suspected trafficking victims in Britain were passed to the National Referral Mechanism (NRM), a government scheme for identifying and supporting victims of human trafficking, up 34 percent from the previous year.
REUTERS
