PD 16 - The Impact of COVID-19 on Migrant and Refugee Health

Like other diseases before it, the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted how quickly migrants and refugees can become especially vulnerable to public health threats. The COVID-19 pandemic has nevertheless reminded us that migrants and refugees are a highly heterogenous population. They are not all at equal risk of exposure to disease, nor do they all have the same levels of access, or lack of access, to host community preventative, diagnostic and treatment services. It has also brought home how deficient many government policies are with respect to the health promotion and protection of migrants and refugees and other minorities. The “one-size-fits all” approach so often taken by policy makers continues to disadvantage migrants and refugees, as well as other social and economic minorities whose health and welfare is now becoming, by both default and design, a responsibility of NGOs and informal associations that do not necessarily have the long-term backing of government.

At another level, the pandemic has been a timely reminder of how important a resource migrants and refugees have become to national health systems, many of which are now over 30% foreign-born staffed at a clinical level. Taking stock of the past twenty or so months of COVID-19 and looking forward to what are predicted to be future viral and/or bacterial pandemics will hopefully allow governments and the public at large to recognize that migrants and refugees now constitute an important part of all high-income country human resource reservoirs, and their health must be defended for pragmatic as well as ethical and human rights reasons. Preparing for future health emergencies will also require more sensitive and specific characterization of the complex interplay between cultural, social, political and economic factors that influence the health of migrants and refugees while they are in transit and in post-arrival settings, together with the role played by social and economic environmental factors in facilitating or retarding the transmission of viral and bacterial threats, into, among, and from, migrant and refugee populations.