Doctors lead urgent search for translators

DOCTORS have been contacting asylum seeker support groups in desperate efforts to secure untrained interpreters, it has emerged.

An asylum-seeker support group in the south said yesterday it was astonished that a non-governmental agency should be contacted for volunteer translation services.

Support groups in Cork and Dublin both said that non-nationals with psychiatric and psychological problems are most at need but that the lack of investment in health translation was “widespread” and “scandalous”.