Healthcare providers sometimes take part in torture and ill treatment, report alleges

Healthcare workers in medical facilities, juvenile detention centres, orphanages, drug treatment centres, and other institutions are sometimes forced to withhold care or engage in treatment that intentionally or negligently inflicts severe pain or suffering for no legitimate medical purpose, Human Rights Watch claims.

In its annual World Report for 2010 the group summarises major trends in human rights issues worldwide, and this year has a section documenting healthcare providers’ alleged complicity in torture or in cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment in countries throughout the world. The cases it highlights include:

• Government physicians conducting forcible anal examinations of men suspected of engaging in homosexual activity in Egypt, …