Italian Health Minister Beatrice Lorenzin presented a project in Rome on Wednesday titled "Border healthcare, health and migration: treating and taking care," and insisted that migrants "don't bring illnesses."
"Viruses travel on flights, in first class, or with cargo, not on migrant boats," Lorenzin said, adding, "A local public hygiene policy doesn't exist, but rather a world health policy: if the world is healthy, you're healthy too."
The project presented by Lorenzin is a free course for specific doctor and healthcare worker training, hosted this month at Rome's Astalli Centre, a Jesuit refugee service.The course has been organised by the Italian International Observatory for Health (OIS), which is trying to answer the question of what doctors can do for migrants.
In just twenty days in the month of August alone, organisers received 600 applications for participation in the course. At the presentation, the audience was moved by the stories of Dr. Pietro Bartolo, the director of the health clinic on Lampedusa, who reaffirmed the importance of a humanitarian approach with migrants.
He said that the illness that affects them is a serious psychological disorder following trauma, torture, and the journey at sea. "Those who arrive have already gone through a process of natural selection," he said. "In 26 years on Favaloro pier, I've seen everything," he said. "I want this training course to succeed."
"Migrants are homesick," said Francesco Montenegro, archbishop of Agrigento and Italian Bishops Conference (CEI) President for Charity and Health. "Being ill destroys them on the inside; they've fled, they're affected psychologically. They get sick after, not before," he said.
"Global health, this is the true fight of inequality," said Stefano Vella, director of the Centre for Global Health at the Higher Health Institute (ISS). "The poor get sick more," he added. The project, created by Massimo Tortorella of the non-profit Consulcesi, is also supported by a donation from Pope Francis through the Alms of St. Peter.