New York-based Northwell Health is training healthcare professionals to identify and address forced labor in the medical supply chain.
The health system actively works alongside the United Nations and HHS to aid in efforts to strengthen the fight against human trafficking. Physicians closely involved in these efforts presented their expertise in a May 9 conference titled "Forced Labor in Health Care Supply Chains: What Hospital Leaders Need to Know."
Overwhelmingly, the focus was how the increased demand for supplies from COVID-19 caused human trafficking issues along the pipeline to surge, while also shedding a light on the major issues around it, Northwell physicians explained.
"We require a number of supplies and resources in our emergency rooms, patient rooms and hospitals to ensure that we save as many lives as possible," Santhosh Paulus, MD, senior program director of the Northwell Health Human Trafficking Education, Advocacy, Response and Training Program said in a May 16 statement. "What we do not often take into consideration is the importance of the lives that may have been lost as a consequence of the supplies we take for granted. Is one life more valuable than another?"
When there is a large global event like the COVID-19 pandemic or the war in Ukraine, Dr. Paulus noted that this causes increased instances of diaspora, the dispersion of people from their homeland, which leads to more vulnerable individuals becoming targets.
Dr. Paulus and Wilonda Green, manager of Northwell's human trafficking program, took part in a pilot program from HHS designed specifically to aid procurement professionals in identification and prevention of human trafficking along the medical supply chain. As part of the program, when professionals at Northwell suspect there may be trafficking involved at some point along the supply chain pipeline, they notify government officials to address the issue.
Northwell is also one of six health systems selected by the UN to participate in another pilot study to develop standardized guidelines to identify and protocols to address instances of sex trafficking victims in healthcare, which will ultimately be used to help the World Health Organization establish universal standards.
Dr. Paulus previously helped establish the guidelines to screen patients who could be victims of trafficking.
Many who become involved in trafficking are immigrants who have been promised jobs or opportunities in the U.S., but instead are forced into labor or sex work and have their passports taken away leaving them with few, if any other options. Others are members of local communities who did not have any other option because of other complex events. As such, "raising awareness about human trafficking where we live and work is the first line of defense," the guidelines state.