Migration and Health

IOM Tajikistan’s Migration Health Unit (MHU) promotes migrant health through extending migrant sensitive health care services, monitoring migrant health, building networks between sending and receiving countries, extending multisectoral approaches to ensure beneficial, accessible, and equitable health services for migrants and mobile populations. IOM Tajikistan’s Migration Health Unit has supported the prevention of communicable diseases among migrants and their families, built knowledge on mental health and disability needs among Tajik return migrants, applied HBMM (Health, Border and Mobility Management) framework, strengthened capacity of national partners and NGOs to promote universal access to health services for both Tajik migrants and foreign nationals in Tajikistan.

Health Promotion and Assistance for Migrants

Since 2005, IOM Tajikistan has implemented many projects to promote migrants’ health in close partnership with Government partners such as the Ministry of Health and Social Protection, as well as several UN agencies and international organizations such as UNDP, WHO, UNAIDS, UNFPA, UN Women, KNCV Tuberculosis Foundation, Project HOPE, US Centre for Diseases Control and Prevention (CDC) on migrant health promotion. Joint UN agency projects were implemented with the financial support of the Global Fund to fight AIDS, TB and Malaria.

IOM Tajikistan also leads a number of studies on health statuses and needs of foreign nationals (migrants) in Tajikistan, as well as Tajik migrants’ and their families’ knowledge, attitudes and practices related to sexually transmitted infections (STIs), HIV, TB. This is done in collaboration with academic institutions at both national and international level such as the Tajik State Medical University, GHRCCA (Global Health Research Center of Central Asia), IFEAC (the French Institute for Central Asian Studies).

Community mobilization and strengthening civil society is key to migrant health promotion work and IOM Tajikistan has built the capacity of 30 local NGOs in the prevention of STIs, HIV and TB among migrants and their families. Additionally, IOM works to empower and build capacity of the Tajik diaspora in the Russian Federation and support peer education among return migrants to promote health seeking behaviour.

Migration health assessments and travel health assistance

Migration health assessments are among the most well-established migration management services offered by IOM. At the request of receiving country governments, IOM provides an evaluation of the physical and mental health status of migrants prior to their departure for the purpose of resettlement, international employment, enrolment in specific migrant assistance programmes, or for obtaining a temporary or permanent visa. Informal migration to the Russian Federation, a sophisticated Russian health assessment system, and the lack of recognition for Tajik medical certificates, means that few Tajik labour migrants engage in pre-departure medical assessments before migration to the Russian Federation.

IOM Tajikistan promotes the need for Tajik pre-departure health assessments between the Governments of Tajikistan and the Russian Federation to ensure the early detection and treatment of conditions of individual and public health concern, safer travel and the prevention of negative health events during travel or on arrival at host communities. Additionally, they serve to protect the health of both migrants and host communities and reduce the expected demand for domestic health and social services.

Mental health, psycho-social response and intercultural communication

Within IOM Tajikistan, mental health programming is already well integrated within the Migration Protection and Assistance thematic. IOM has generated trainings, capacity building and informational products for those within the victim protection system to ensure victims of trafficking can access trauma-informed, age-appropriate, gender- and culturally-sensitive services and assistance with a specific focus on mental health and psycho-social support. For more information, please see the Migration Protection and Assistance thematic page here.

IOM Tajikistan is implementing the country’s first project to build knowledge on mental health and disability prevalence among return migrants. If migration is not safe, orderly and well-managed, migrants can be exposed to risks such as barriers to integration, mental and physical abuse and exploitation, xenophobia and racism, poor occupational health and safety.

For more information on IOM’s global mental health and psycho-social programming, please see here.

Emergency health

The Health, Border and Mobility Management (HBMM) Framework articulates IOM’s strategic role and objectives in the prevention, detection and response to communicable diseases in the context of widespread and multi-directional human mobility. It provides an framework of action for IOM to undertake activities related to health, border and mobility management, and serves as a reference for IOM Member States and partners to understand the Organization’s role and contributions in this area of work.

Under this framework, and in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, IOM Tajikistan is leading the first regional border health project “Enhancing health and border management to respond to COVID-19 and other communicable diseases”, supported by the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). A multisectoral team was established on border health which produced a needs assessment on health security at border entry points across involved Central Asian countries, allowing IOM to strengthen capacity of border and health staff, improve sanitation infrastructure, and developing standard operational procedures at points of entry.

For more information, please contact IOM Tajikistan’s Migration and Health specialist Rukhshona Qurbonova (rqurbonova@iom.int).