A medical anthropology research study was conducted in 2015 at the First Aid and Reception Center (CPSA) on the island of Lampedusa (Italy) as part of a larger health project carried out by the National Institute for Health, Migration and Poverty (INMP) in Rome. The study investigated the health conditions of migrants at the moment of their departure and on arrival, their migration journey, and their life plans and expectations for the future. The ethnographic method adopted for the study was based on participant observation and on data collection by means of a semi-structured interview (51 items simultaneously translated by cultural mediators into Tigrinya, Arabic, English, and French).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFImmigrants show higher adjusted diabetes prevalence than Italians, especially among South-East Asians followed by North and Sub-Saharan Africans. Diabetes progression is influenced by food behaviors, and diet control is a critical aspect in disease management. Food habits have many cultural and symbolic implications.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Chagas Disease (CD) is endemic in many Latin-American countries, Bolivia in particular. It is now spreading in Italy as a host country for transcontinental migrants and becoming an emerging health problem. This anthropological action-research, as part of a wider medical project on Neglected Tropical Diseases, has the purpose of analyzing the sociocultural construction of CD and its representation in Bolivian people living in Rome as well as barriers, such as the stigma about the illness, to access the National Health Service for those potentially affected.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Little is known about mental health and resettlement difficulties of Chinese asylum seekers fleeing China due to religious persecutions.
Aim: This study explores main post-migration living difficulties (PMLD) in this population, with a focus on their role in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Methods: A total of 67 patients (95.
In the context of the project "Clinical and social evaluation of medical practices in the treatment of infectious diseases in pediatrics for children of vulnerable population" carried out in 2013 by a multidisciplinary team at the National Institute for Health, Migration and Poverty (NIHMP) in Rome, a study in medical anthropology on the incorporation of illnesses that mothers feel they transmit to their children through breastfeeding was conducted. The results of the anthropological study, that targeted 34 children and adolescents from the age of 3 to the age of 17, all immigrants from Latin America residing in Italy, show that some forms of suffering in minors are described by women as being connected to factors such as susto ("fright"), coraje, muina, enojo ("anger") and mal de ojo ("evil eye"), and are in relation to a specific cultural frame. It is clear that barriers that prevent the access to the healthcare system must be removed, barriers that are accentuated by linguistic and cultural incomprehension, through adequate multidisciplinary healthcare settings such as the one we are presenting, composed of a medical doctor, an anthropologist and a cultural mediator.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF