On the 18th of January, the European Forum for Primary Care hosted a webinar on prison health, which was attended by delegates from around the world. The webinar focused on how primary care is provided in prisons in England, Wales, and Kyrgyzstan, and discussed some of the challenges faced in terms of ensuring continuity of care for prisoners when they are released into the community, and examples of when things work well.
After an introduction by Anke van Damm, presentations were received from Dr Coral Sirdifield and Dr Lauren Smith at the University of Lincoln. Dr Sirdifield provided an overview of how healthcare is provided in prisons in England and Wales, together with some of the challenges around this, and some of the work that is currently being undertaken to address these challenges. Dr Smith provided case study examples from practice to illustrate the real world consequences of when people are unable to continue to receive the healthcare that they have been receiving in prison, together with examples of where continuity of care has been well organised. This was followed by a presentation about primary care within prisons in Kyrgyzstan by Dina Masamilova. Finally, discussion turned to a position paper that a working group within the EFPC are intending to write on this topic. This work will be led b Peter Gronewegen from NIVEL.
The full webinar can be accessed on the YouTube channel for the European Forum for Primary Care at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZcWHtmnH5M. Further webinars to present evidence from other countries will be held later in the year.