Exercise: Three hungerstriking young males
Three prisoners – young males in good health – have declared to be on hunger strike. They supposedly have been ingesting only water and tea for the past 6 days. The prison doctor has examined them every day and reported back on their condition to the Prison Director.
What should the prison doctor do when examining the hunger strikers? Is the prison Director correct in worrying about their state of health?
Your answer : doctor must talking to strikers and to be sure about the nutrition is it good or not were malnutrition or not ,advised them. prison director is correct in worrying about their state of health
Compare your answer to the comments below:
Strictly speaking, there is nothing "medical" to do at the start of a hunger strike, if the prisoners are normally in good health. Any normally healthy person can fast for several days and longer without any serious risk to his or her health. However, as has been mentioned in the previous Lessons, there are contra-indications to total fasting, such as gastritis (which may mask an ulcer), of course any history of gastric or duodenal ulcer itself, Diabetes and other metabolic diseases, etc. Some prisoners may not know they suffer from one of these conditions.
Hunger strikers may have questions about the effects fasting may have later on their health (if they were to pursue their fasting for a long time). Or they may want to confide in the doctor, to tell him or her exactly what the situation is. It is essential that the prison doctor do everything s/he can to remain "neutral" and show the prisoners that s/he is not trying to "pressure" them one way or the other, but that the prisoners can confide in the doctor. Trust is essential in any doctor-patient relationship, but all the more so when Hunger Strikes are concerned.
As for the Prison Director, s/he should be reassured by the doctor as to the situation of the hunger strikers in a general sense: if they are healthy and there are no contra-indications, fasting per se does not do any harm for the first days or even weeks. Prison Directors often get "nervous" about hunger strikers because they fear they may "die" all of a sudden, and they, the Directors, will be held responsible. This fear should be allayed. More often however, Prison Directors do not want the "bad publicity" that they perceive the hunger strike as giving them. They may try to put pressure on the prison doctor already at a very early stage, to "intervene" with the hunger strikers to make them stop their protest, either by putting them in hospital forcibly, or by making false statements as to the "effects" of a hunger strike.
In one case in the Middle East, a prison doctor spread the information amongst hunger strikers in his prison, that fasting for long periods of time caused impotence in young males. This statement he knew to be false, but knowing the extreme sensitivity of the issue, he wanted to "frighten them" into stopping their fasting. This is not the doctor's role. Moreover, to collaborate in something like this destroys any credibility the doctor may have with all the prisoners.