Supporting Health Practitioners in Caring for Victims of Trafficking
Health practitioners who work with victims of trafficking and other
exploited migrants will be provided greater guidance and support in
their work through a new handbook produced by IOM and the London
School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
The handbook – "Caring for Trafficked Persons: Guidance
for Health Providers" – will be launched on 9 July at IOM's
International Dialogue on Migration in Geneva focusing on the human
rights and protection of trafficked people and exploited
migrants.
Publication
For many victims of trafficking, the physical and psychological
aftermath of a trafficking experience can be severe and enduring,
hampering their ability to care for themselves and their families
and to move on with their lives. For the most severely abused,
those violated at the youngest ages or those most vulnerable to
mental health problems, the psychological burden may even put them
at risk of re-trafficking and/or other forms of abuse.
With health professionals likely to come into contact with
victims of trafficking at different stages of the trafficking
processes and recovery, diagnosis and treatment can be
exceptionally challenging, particularly when security is an issue
either for the person treating the victim or the victims themselves
because the trafficker is still in the picture.
Treatment can also be difficult to administer because the
victim, viewed either as a trafficker or as a criminal because
country entry laws have been broken, has been imprisoned or simply
because a country does not have a social services system in place
or that the victim is about to be deported and therefore, unlikely
to be prioritized for care.
The handbook, funded by the United Nations Global Initiative to
Fight Human Trafficking (UN.GIFT) and bringing together a broad
range of experts working on the issue, provides practical,
non-clinical advice to help a health provider understand the
phenomenon of human trafficking, recognize some of the associated
health problems and consider safe and appropriate approaches to
providing health care for victims.
"Health has been a neglected area of study," says Dr. Cathy
Zimmerman of the London School for Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
"We need a greater knowledge base on the health needs of
individuals who are exploited in different sectors and in various
ways, and how to return their health and well-being."
Caring for Trafficked Persons can be downloaded at
"paragraph-link-no-underline" href=
"http://publications.iom.int/bookstore/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=1&products_id=510">http://publications.iom.int/bookstore/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=1&products_id=510
in English, and will be available in Arabic, Chinese and Spanish
before the end of the year.
For more information please contact:
Rosilyne Borland
HIV and Health Promotion Coordinator, Migration Health
Department
Phone: +41 22 717 9234
E-mail:
"mailto:rborland@iom.int">rborland@iom.int