Migration, Public Health and Compulsory Screening for TB and HIV: Asylum and migration working paper 1

Article

The first in a series of working papers on asylum and migration, discussing in particular the health screening of asylum seekers and immigrants for TB and HIV.

The focus of this paper is principally on the issue of whether policies of compulsory TB and HIV screening should be introduced for asylum seekers who come to the UK.

The reason for this focus is not because tuberculosis and HIV is particularly associated with this group of migrants - the evidence indicates that asylum seekers are not only a very small proportion of all migrants and also that they are not disproportionately affected. Rather it is because this is where the political heat in relation to government policy has been most fiercely directed and arguably where, in the current political climate, the Government is under the strongest pressure to act.

This series is a vehicle for examining the evidence in relation to asylum and migration issues, an area of fast-moving policy which involves stakeholders at many levels.

View the other papers in the series here. All are available free of charge.

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