Towards a European Framework to Monitor Infectious Diseases among Migrant Populations: Design and Applicability.

Flavia Riccardo,Christian Napoli,Cesar Munoz,Silvia Declich,Massimo Fabiani,Tommi Kärki,Antonio Chiarenza,Teymur Noori,Maria Dente,Paolo Rossi

doi:10.3390/ijerph120911640

Abstract

There are limitations in our capacity to interpret point estimates and trends of infectious diseases occurring among diverse migrant populations living in the European Union/European Economic Area (EU/EEA). The aim of this study was to design a data collection framework that could capture information on factors associated with increased risk to infectious diseases in migrant populations in the EU/EEA. The authors defined factors associated with increased risk according to a multi-dimensional framework and performed a systematic literature review in order to identify whether those factors well reflected the reported risk factors for infectious disease in these populations. Following this, the feasibility of applying this framework to relevant available EU/EEA data sources was assessed. The proposed multidimensional framework is well suited to capture the complexity and concurrence of these risk factors and in principle applicable in the EU/EEA. The authors conclude that adopting a multi-dimensional framework to monitor infectious diseases could favor the disaggregated collection and analysis of migrant health data.

Highlights

After the end of the World War II, Europe shifted from being a major source of emigration to become a major destination for human migration [1]
We classified the existing variables according to the four domains, and we examined the feasibility of aligning this data with denominators of migrant population estimates for the European Economic Area (EU/Economic Area (EEA)) by examining the public websites and the data published by the three existing official sources of data: the statistical office of the European Union (Eurostat), the United Nations Population Division Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN-DESA) and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)
Through this study, three of the priorities identified by European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) [26] for designing a framework to monitor infectious diseases among migrant populations

Summary

Introduction

After the end of the World War II, Europe shifted from being a major source of emigration to become a major destination for human migration [1]. There has been a steady increase in the number of international migrants living in Europe from the 1960s, when they were around 3.5% of the total population [1]. This trend accelerated in the 1990s, when countries in Southern Europe became the destination of large migration flows [2]. There are different migration patterns across the European region, with some European Union (EU) countries only recently observing increases in the number of economic immigrants and asylum seekers, and others where migrants and their descendants have, over time, acquired a demographic and social stratification. In 2014, 38 European countries recorded 264,000 asylum applications, a

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