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UK legal migrants 'too scared to seek medical help'

UK

A charity group says migrants who are in possession of proper documents are still afraid of arrest and thus avoid seeking vital medical care.

Doctors of the World said the vast majority (83 percent) of the patients it spoke to for its annual survey had no access to the National Health Service (NHS).

Although more than half (57.5 percent) of the people attending its clinic in Bethnal Green, east London, were foreign nationals who did not have permission to reside in the UK, the charity said on average patients had already been living in the country for six-and-a-half years, illustrating that they are not so-called health tourists travelling to the UK for the purpose of free medical treatment, the Independent reported.

Administrative and legal barriers, lack of knowledge or understanding of the healthcare system and their rights, and language barriers were cited as reasons for not pursuing conventional healthcare routes.

Press TV’s UK Desk carried out an interview with Nick Harvey, the

communications manager of Doctors of the World in London for his take on the issue.

Harvey told Press TV’s website that “today we are publishing a report where we surveyed more than 20 thousand people in 25 cities across Europe, and we have had some quite shocking findings.”

“This is how policies are creating xenophobic restriction on people’s access to healthcare which can have dire consequences.”

“In the UK we have had clinic there for more than 10 years… and we have seen more and more people accessing our clinic and part of the reason is that they are just too frightened to access healthcare,” the charity official pointed out.

“Even though everyone is entitled to access primary healthcare to see a doctor, people are not going to the doctor because in the UK at the moment, there is a climate of fear,” said Harvey, adding, “There is a rhetoric around migration and migrants which is very negative.”

MTM/GHN


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