Migration Health

Migration Health Assessments are among the most well-established migration management services offered by IOM. They consist of Immigration Medical Services for refugees and migrants, made prior to their departure as part of a refugee resettlement programme or for obtaining a temporary or permanent visa for migrants.

Migration Health Assessments contribute substantially to addressing the health assessments of migrants and refugee, benefiting both hosting and destination communities. Migration Health activities can also include promoting positive health seeking behaviors through pre-departure health raising activities.

Detection of communicable diseases, including tuberculosis, of mobile populations is one of the objectives of the Migration Health Assessment Program.

IOM’s Migration Health Assessment Centers (MHAC)  in Islamabad, Lahore, Karachi and Mirpur have been providing health and travel health assessment services to over 555,000 migrants and refugees moving to the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and New Zealand since 2007. In 2016 IOM Migration Health Department also have MOU with the National Tuberculosis Control Program (NTP) to provide technical support to the National Reference Laboratory for training of their staff in Sputum Liquid Culture and Line Probe Testing for Tuberculosis and they have declare our MHAC as TB DOT centers.

In parallel to the Migration Health Assessment, IOM has been actively involved during national emergency situations by providing primary and preventive health care support to vulnerable, disaster-affected populations following the 2005 earthquake and massive flooding during 2010-2011. Mobile field health units staffed with IOM medical personnel transported patients requiring interventional or tertiary care based treatment from the field to hospitals. During this period, IOM played a pivotal role by linking two tertiary care hospitals directly to the flood displaced population by introducing Tele consultations through Polycom video conferencing.  MHD IOM has the capacity to immediately enforce emergency work plans in case of natural disasters and epidemics. Additionally, IOM is supporting the Government of Pakistan to develop migrant-sensitive health policies to address the health of migrants through a multi-sector approach.