Migrants and emerging public health issues in a globalized world: threats, risks and challenges, an evidence-based framework.

International population mobility is an underlying factor in the emergence of public health threats and risks that must be managed globally. These risks are often related, but not limited, to transmissible pathogens. Mobile populations can link zones of disease emergence to lowprevalence or nonendemic areas through rapid or high-volume international movements, or both.

Health of displaced Albanian Kosovars in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia: fitness to travel and health outcomes assessment.

Introduction: During the 1999 conflict in Kosovo, an estimated 850,000 people were displaced from Kosovo. Many thousands of these people arrived in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), for whom a humanitarian evacuation programme (HEP) was conducted by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM). More than 91,000 people were moved to third countries under this programme.

Is compulsory overseas medical screening of migrants justifiable?

For more than four decades the international Organization for Migration (IOM) has been providing medical screening of prospective migrants according to the admission requirements of resettlement countries. The main reason resettlement countries impose mandatory medical screening is to prevent the entrance of migrants with certain health problems in the belief that they pose a potential public health risk or financial burden to the nation. High rates of communicable diseases among foreign-born residents of industrial countries have raised concern about the impact of international migration on transmission of such diseases and the role and efficacy of medical screening.