The Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne. Picture: Craig Borrow

Thousands of Australians rallied over the weekend urging Pacific island detention camps be shut, and medical professionals at the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne are reportedly refusing to discharge asylum-seeker patients if they are to be locked up again.

“We acknowledge the evidence that children in detention face circumstances which are very harmful to their health, their growth and their development”, vice president Stephen Parnis said. Many of these patients have no hope of improvements should they be discharged back to detention, an opinion piece on the Herald Sun noted.

Professor Newman said even though the pair’s health had improved by mid-2015, their doctors refused to discharge them unless the Department of Immigration agreed to not return them to detention. “So nearly all children’s hospitals should agree the same, and stand behind a banner that says detention harms children”.

Immigration Minister, Peter Dutton says he won’t be changing the Government’s policy and that the number of children in detention has dropped significantly under the Coalition.

Owler estimated a few 200 children were being held, about half in Australia and the rest offshore.

The Sydney Children’s Hospitals Network, which includes the Children’s hospital at Westmead and Sydney Children’s hospital, said its staff had limited exposure to children from Nauru but they worked closely with the government to ensure their clinical needs were met.

According to Australian Border Force statistics there are 93 children being held on Nauru and 104 children in detention in Australia.

AMA president Brian Owler says children in detention are exposed to things no child should ever see.

The woman, aged in her 30s, was suffering post-traumatic stress disorder and post-natal depression, which also affected her infant child’s development.

“The environment of a detention centre is so far from what develops normal opportunity, the families don’t have the opportunity to play together, the children are subject to rules and regulations that no typical child is subjected to”.

“Many of these conditions will stay with them throughout their lives”.

‘I understand the concern of doctors, but the Defence and Border Force staff on our vessels who were pulling dead kids out of the water don’t want the boats to restart, ‘ he said.

“I’m extremely proud to be the health minister in a state where its doctors and nurses are putting the interest of children first”, Hennessy said.

On Saturday doctors from the Royal Children’s hospital in Melbourne wrote an editorial in the Herald-Sun about the harm detention causes to children, and called for “moral leadership on this issue to find a solution, quickly, to use alternatives to detention and to stop the harm”.