Research insights, learning opportunities and updates from the global migration health community.
Healthcare practitioners who are dedicated to making the lives of children and their families better watched in disbelief as the ongoing situation of separating children from their parents unfolded at the southern border of the United States. We know that for many families the migration journey is traumatic and has lasting effects; separation and detention simply compound this trauma.
The conditions in which migrants travel, live, and work often carry exceptional risks to their physical and mental well-being. Even if certain migrant groups have access to health services, they tend to avoid them due to fear of deportation, xenophobic and discriminatory attitudes within society, and other linguistic, cultural, and economic barriers. Evidence indicates that social stigmatization and anxieties generated by restrictive immigration policies hinder undocumented immigrants’ access to health rights and minimizes immigrants’ sense of entitlement to such rights.
The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control is developing evidence-based guidance for voluntary screening, treatment and vaccine prevention of infectious diseases for newly arriving migrants to the European Union/European Economic Area. The objective of this systematic review protocol is to guide the identification, appraisal and synthesis of the best available evidence on prevention and assessment of the following priority infectious diseases: tuberculosis, HIV, hepatitis B, hepatitis C, measles, mumps, rubella, diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, poliomyelitis (polio), Haemophilus influenza disease, strongyloidiasis and schistosomiasis.
Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States are the largest immigrant- and refugee-receiving countries in the world and are currently collaborating on preventing importation of TB into each of their countries. Joint efforts in a small number of high-burden countries can help prevent importation of TB cases and also contribute to control efforts within source countries.
This article first sets out general principles for cross-border collaboration and continuity of care. It then presents a series of case studies. Policies and practices on cross-border collaboration in selected low-incidence countries (Australia, Italy, Norway, The Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States) are described and critically appraised. Details of the World Health Organization's (WHO's) European Respiratory Society TB Consilium for transborder migration and those of the Health Network's TBNet activities are described. With increasing population movement, including migrants and travellers, it is time to build on good practices and existing tools and to remove legal, financial and social barriers to ensure early diagnosis, full treatment and continuity of care across our world.
This article describes the collaborative experiences of five countries (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, United Kingdom and the United States of America, members of the Immigration and Refugee Health Working Group [IRHWG]), with similar pre-migration screening programmes for TB that are mandated. Qualitative examples of capacity building through IRHWG programmes are provided. Combined, the IRHWG member countries screen approximately 2 million persons overseas every year. Large-scale pre-entry screening programmes undertaken by IRHWG countries require building additional capacity for health care providers, radiology facilities and laboratories. This has resulted in significant improvements in laboratory and treatment capacity, providing availability of these facilities for national public health programmes.
This review provides an overview and critical assessment of TB screening practices that are focused on migrants and visitors from high to low TB incidence countries, including pre-migration screening and post-migration follow-up of those deemed to be at an increased risk of developing TB. We focus mainly on migrants who enter the destination country via application for a long-stay visa, as well as asylum seekers and refugees, but briefly consider issues related to short-term visitors and those with long duration multiple-entry visas. Issues related to the screening of children and screening for latent TB infection are also explored.
This article outlines how collaboration between like-minded national governments can improve premigration health screening through information sharing, collaborative learning and increased capability in countries of origin to not only screen for illness and disability, but to more effectively put measures in place to address these before, during and after arrival. Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and the US have worked together for more than a decade on migration health screening policies to ensure better management of health needs and successful resettlement. A case study about the Syrian refugee cohort, which began arriving in Australia in late 2015, illustrates how intergovernmental collaboration can improve settlement.
This paper explores the potential risks associated with the blurring of global migration governance and health security agendas in Southern Africa, a region associated with high levels of population mobility, communicable, and – increasingly – non-communicable diseases.