We are pleased to announce that on February 27th, BIRMM member Rita Vanobberghen successfully defended her PhD titled "Medical monitoring and follow-up of hunger strikes in a population of undocumented migrants: a case-study in Brussels. On behalf of everyone at BIRMM we congratulate Rita on this wonderful achievement!
Her work collected information about 18 hunger strikes of undocumented migrants in Brussels from 2008 to 2021, with more than 1.600 participants. One of the problems encountered is that the guidelines found in scientific literature only cover the monitoring of hunger strikes in detention and hospital settings, while very little information can be found about hunger strikes by large groups of people, who have no access to healtcare and live in very challenging conditions. Her thesis concludes with recommendations to update and improve the existing manuals for monitoring hunger strikes of undocumented migrants and to enhance the education of health professionals so that they acquire the competences to appropriately monitor hunger strikes.Rita was supervised by Prof. dr. Dirk Devroey and Prof. dr. em. Fred Louckx.