Cancer patient deported

The chief of the British immigration agency defended the decision to deport a cancer sufferer from Ghana back to her country by insisting that there were hundreds of similar cases each year.
Lin Homer, the chief executive of the Borders and Immigration Agency, told MPs that the courts had frequently ruled that it did not constitute inhumane treatment to deport people who were undergoing medical treatment in in the UK.
She said that the government had to apply this ruling even if the patient involved later suffered from a relape or fatal consquences (ie. death.)
Ama Sumani, aged 39 and a mother of two, was deported back to Ghana from a British hospital where she was being given medical treatment for a cancer affecting her bone marrow  because she had overstayed her UK visa.
Keith Vaz, the chairman of the Commons home affairs select committee, who spoke by ‘phone to Sumani at a hospital in Ghana, said her health was deteriorating and he urged the immigration minister, Liam Byrne, to intervene.
When Mrs. Sumani arrived in Ghana she was advised that it would cost £2,400 to continue her treatment for a further three months, which she could not afford.
The Lancet, a British medical journal, strongly criticised the decision to deport her, saying that it was atrocious and barbaric. The journal also published a petition signed by 276 doctors urging the government to stop legislation which would remove the right of failed asylum seekers to seek NHS treatment.
But Lin Homer defended the decision to deport Sumani, saying there were many hundreds of similar cases each year, and they were all difficult to decide.
She said the courts had ruled that deportation could be stopped only in “very rare and extreme cases” under article 3 of the European convention on human rights, which bans degrading or inhumane treatment.