Including Migrants in the Vaccination Plan

ACCORDING TO A PAPER BY SOME RESEARCHER OF BOCCONI, IN EUROPE, INCLUSION MODELS FOR THE VACCINATION PLAN ARE POSSIBLE AND ESSENTIAL

An inclusive strategy to combat Covid-19, including the vaccination program, guarantees equity in access to health services and contributes to the safety of the entire population in compliance with the universal ideal of the Italian health system. In reality, entire categories of people are left at greater risk of contagion, such as homeless people or regular and irregular migrants present in Italy. "Although our Constitution protects the right to health, Italy did not immediately mention these categories as recipients of vaccination. And so all those who did not have a health card were in practice excluded,” says Eduardo Missoni, CERGAS, SDA Bocconi School of Management.

“In Europe, in general, there has been a tendency to include migrant populations in a more or less explicit way. Among the most virtuous cases is the Dutch decision to mention among the recipients of the vaccine all people present on the national territory, even if clandestinely. Then there is Great Britain which has included everyone regardless of their status," continues Missoni. “Indeed, Germany has included migrants among its priorities, together with the homeless, immediately after the elderly. And Portugal has formalized the presence of those who had even just started the regularization process."

In Europe, therefore, inclusion models are possible and diversified according to “Challenges in the equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines for migrant populations in Europe,” a paper that Missoni published in June 2021 in the journal The Lancet Regional Health, together with two of his former Bocconi students Marzia Calvi and Silvia Ussai.
 
"To ensure fairness and universality of access to health services, Italy should strengthen the National Health System in general, investing primarily in the relaunch of territorial medicine and in the integrated networks of doctors and basic socio-health workers,” comments Missoni, who is engaged with many of his former students in the non-profit startup Saluteglobale.it. "In the perspective of universal public health, the priority attention to the most vulnerable and most at risk categories, such as migrants, is not only typical of a vaccination plan made necessary by contingent causes, but is an essential feature of a sustainable, fair, and effective health system."

by Camillo Papini