SYNOPSIS
David went to Nauru in December to see children referred to him. He will present a case related to this visit and will discuss what are our ethical responsibilities to asylum seekers and the role of advocacy.

SPEAKER
Professor David Isaacs is a paediatric infectious disease specialist and general paediatrician from Sydney. He has been editor-in-chief of the Journal of Paediatrics & Child Health since 2009. In 2002, he and A/Prof Henry Kilham obtained post-graduate diplomas in bioethics from Monash University. Since then they have supervised medical students in bioethics research projects, taught post-graduate bioethics at the University of Sydney and published over 90 peer-reviewed articles on bioethics. Since 2004, David has been Head of the Health Assessment for Refugee Kids (HARK) clinic at the Children’s Hospital at Westmead.

His youngest son Mark worked for the Salvation Army on Nauru in 2012 and wrote a book “The Undesirables” describing the traumatic conditions for asylum seeker men. In December 2014 David went to Nauru as a visiting paediatrician and was so affected by the conditions that he has been advocating passionately for asylum seeker children ever since.