class=”icon-apoyo_16_b”> immigrants are not disease carriers or uploaded to the services, or health-damaging economies, according to an international review
Are the myths most frequently used by some governments to deny entry of migrants or restrict access to health care.
The Government has adopted the norm that returns the universal health care
immigrants are not disease carriers nor a burden to the health services. So strong are the conclusions of the medical review most complete done to date, and recently published by the journal The Lancet. Far from what some political formations to exposing and invalidating restrictive policies that various countries have been established to ban their entry according to their state of health, this international report ensures that migrants contribute more to the State coffers than they receive in return and that their mortality rates in most of the diseases are lower than those of the general population.
This new work, directed by 20 renowned experts from 13 countries, dismantles the myths that most often used by some governments to deny entry of migrants or restrict access to health care. “In too many nationalities, the topic of migration is used to divide societies, and to promote a populist agenda,” says the editor of the medical journal, Richard Horton. “With one billion people in the movement that there is today, the increase of the population in many regions of the world and the rising aspirations of a new generation of young people, migration will not disappear […] Contribute more than they cost and the way in which we give shape to your health and well-being will affect our societies for future generations.”
According to the analysis, in the advanced economies, each 1% increase in migrants in the adult population increases the Gross domestic Product per person by up to 2%. In addition, these people contribute to the overall wealth. Throughout 2017, sent approximately 613 billion dollars to their families of origin. The majority of migrants in high-income countries are the students who pay for their education, or workers who are taxpayers.
that Is to say, the migration does not harm economies and a burden to the health services. On the contrary, “it is more likely that these people strengthen services providing medical care, teaching children, caring for older people and supporting the services insufficient staff”, as it summarizes the report.
The international migrants in high-income countries have lower mortality rates compared with the general populations in most of the disease categories (cardiovascular, digestive, endocrine, neoplasms, diseases of nerve and respiratory, mental and behavioural disorders). In addition, “there is no association systematic between migration and importation of infectious diseases. The evidence shows that the risk of transmission to host populations is generally low,” reads the review.
In regard to the use of health services, Pablo Iglesias, technical advocacy by Doctors of the World, remember that “immigrants represent between 23% and 31% less than average expenditure of an English”. The reasons: “Numerous analyses have already shown that the people who come to Spain are typically in a good state of health, better than the Spanish average. You have to deal with a process extremely hard and most of the people who do it are very young and with very good state of health. On the other hand, there is fear of discrimination-of-care’.
So, dismantling a myth behind the other, the commission of experts of the meta-analysis calls on the governments to improve the access of migrants to health services and to strengthen their right to health care. As pointed out in the journal The Lancet, the limits to the access to health care and the restriction of entry based on their state of health are increasingly common. In fact, 35 countries have imposed some kind of travel ban for people with HIV.
In the words of the president of the commission of experts, professor Ibrahim Abubakar, “not to create health systems that integrate migrant populations could prove more costly for national economies and the global health that the modest investments necessary to protect the right to health of migrants and ensure that they can be productive members of society”. In the same line, one of the authors of the work, Terry McGovern, of the University of Columbia (USA), says, “this strategy is essential to reduce the costs associated with any burden of preventable disease in these populations.”
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