Long-running health treatment issues within one of the most disadvantaged and vulnerable communities in the ACT - Canberra's minimum-to-maximum jail - are the focus of a five-year "health and wellbeing" strategy.
An independent report last year identified significant problems within Justice Health, with an "out of sight, out of mind" attitude toward the health needs of more than 400 people behind bars at the Alexander Maconochie Centre.
It was not unusual for a prisoner to wait up to eight weeks for an appointment, the report last year found.
A five-year strategy to address the problems was rolled out by ACT Health on Thursday, with the headline ambition of "high quality, responsive detainee health and wellbeing care".
Justice Health Minister Emma Davidson described the strategy as "a significant first step in building upon a shared understanding and commitment among organisations who have responsibilities for health and wellbeing services to detainees".
The strategy will deliver its first action plan by December this year.
The independent Healthy Prison Review last year found that the Hume Health Centre was not fit for purpose, nearly one third of detainees suffered from a disability, and 71 per cent could only gain access to psychological help when they were in crisis.
ACT Health's own data - curiously, most of it some five years old - in its strategy reported levels of chronic disease in jail far beyond that seen in the wider population, and that over half the inmates had a history of head injury that resulted in a loss of consciousness.
More than half the prison population has had a mental health disorder diagnosis.
The 2022 Healthy Prison Review found that the Hume Health Centre had been designed, like the rest of the prison, with a much smaller detained population in mind.
Three providers, including the Winnunga Aboriginal Health Service, operate out of the centre and the inspector found that "the efficient and effective running of the health centre is severely impacted by the lack of physical space available and the operational challenges of moving patients in and out of the centre in a timely way".
"The health centre was designed based on the original plan of the AMC, a population of 255 detainees," the inspector found.
"Since the centre opened in 2009 [it] ... has not had any enhancements during the centre's operation, other than the addition of a small demountable building used for Justice Health staff offices."
Refurbishment of the Hume Health Centre, and an assessment of its functionality, was a recommendation in the report.
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