Security Decree: Sharp drop in number of migrants seeking medical care in last three weeks

EveryOne Group “Criminalization of illegal migrants raises risk of medical emergency. Cases of untreated leprosy reported in Milan. Threat of disease outbreaks.

“Just hours before the final Senate vote on Decree 733 (security bill), due to start at 1 pm tomorrow, reports have confirmed the recent sharp drop in the number of migrants seeking medical care for serious illnesses,” say Roberto Malini, Matteo Pegoraro and Dario Picciau, co-presidents of the EveryOne Group rights organization.

According to an EveryOne Group survey of hospitals in Rome (San Gallicano, Policlinico Umberto I, San Camillo Forlanini, Policlinico Tor Vergata, Ospedale Grassi di Ostia) and Milan (Niguarda, Ospedale Maggiore Policlinico, San Paolo, San Carlo Borromeo), the number of migrants seeking medical care at the emergency departments fell by 35% in the last three weeks, following the announcement that the so-called security bill would probably pass in the Senate. Among other measures, the bill would make illegal immigration a criminal offense in Italy.

Drastic falls of nearly 75% in attendance to health care services were noted at the San Paolo Hospital, Milan.

“In the meantime,” stated the EveryOne co-presidents, “our rights activists have received reports of desperate cases resulting from the spreading fear among migrants of being denounced. On 10 June a 39-year-olf Ukrainian caregiver without a legal entrance visa was found dead of massive hemorrhage after a spontaneous abortion in the Torre a Mare apartment where she had finally found employment. She was said to have suddenly felt ill and begun bleeding but refused calling for help, since she was afraid of losing her job or being denounced as an illegal migrant. Similar episodes take place every day,” Malini, Pegoraro and Picciau continued, “like the case of a 33-year-old Chinese father who, fearing being denounced as an illegal migrant, left the Luigi Sacco Hospital, Milan, without regular discharge on 14 June, taking his newborn son who had just undergone an operation for a severe heart malformation.”

Besides constituting a violation of international human rights agreements, the European Union Charta of Fundamental Rights, the Charta on Human and Peoples’ Rights, Decree 733 will create no end of problems for public health in Italy and the rest of the world. “Several days ago one of our rights activities in Milan spoke with an African family who is hiding a child showing typical symptoms of leprosy,” EveryOne stated, “because they are terrorized by the idea of being denounced and having the family separated owing to their illegal status.

The sister and the child,” the international human rights organization activist continued, “presented with purplish patches, hyopigmented macules and nodules. This could be the start of an outbreak spreading into the community, as occurred in the Medieval ages. But in Italy, as elsewhere in the EU, there are migrants from the Congo, Rwanda, Sudan and other African countries where the Ebola virus is endemic. After the approval of the decree, these people will live hidden away in appalling hygienic conditions. It would take only one case of transmission of the Ebola virus or another fatal hemorrhagic fever (and there are many such communicable diseases),” EveryOne concluded, “to unleash an uncontrollable epidemic. And once an outbreak has begun, because of the fear among migrants to collaborate with the Italian public health authorities and agencies, the Italian population will be decimated within a matter of a couple of months.”