The Italian NGO Emergency says it has assisted more than 17,000 vulnerable people in Milan -- including migrants -- over the past ten years through its Politruck and Minivan mobile clinics.
In ten years of activities, the Italian NGO Emergency has assisted over 17,000 people in its Politruck and Minivan mobile clinics in Milan. It had set up these mobile clinics, it added in a statement, "after seeing how the [Italian] social and healthcare system is ever more fragmentary, and how economic, linguistic, and administrative barriers make access and continuity in treatment, the safeguarding of health, and social dignity ever more difficult."
Most of those helped from outside EU
Emergency focuses on the most fragile parts of the population through a multidisciplinary team wit doctors, nurses, cultural mediators, and social workers.
A total of 23 percent of the people who made use of the services offered by Politruck also asked for help to solve social and poverty-related difficulties, the NGO noted.
Most of those assisted are non-Europeans with stay permits (52 percent), followed by non-Europeans without stay permits (33 percent), Italians (6 percent), Europeans without proper documentation (5 percent), and Europeans with proper documentation (4 percent).
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Migrant women aged 18-34 most at risk
According to Loredana Carpentieri, coordinator of the project in Milan, "It is interesting to note that most of the patients that we have seen in these years live in Italy with stay permits -- and thus should have direct access to the national healthcare service, which instead is not always the case."
Women, especially migrant ones between the ages of 18 and 34, are a particularly fragile component, finding it difficult to access the healthcare system for sexual and reproductive health services.
This, Emergency noted, is "connected with the inadequate regulations of the Lombardy region, which do not ensure an ENI (non-registered European) code for access to the national healthcare service and basic healthcare services for EU nationals in need who cannot register with the national healthcare service."
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