Author: Krystyna Rivera, Country Coordinator for Germany and Ukraine, REG; Communications Specialist, 100% Life, Germany
At the World Health Summit in Berlin, global health experts gathered to tackle a critical question: how can healthcare systems become genuinely accessible to women, children, and youth on the move? The numbers are staggering, with roughly one billion displaced people worldwide, including 49 million children. As session moderator Santino Severoni from the World Health Organization pointed out, there is no one-size-fits-all solution because health during migration is shaped long before a person ever walks into a clinic. It depends on everything from legal status and housing to language barriers and the attitudes of the host community.
Natalia Linou from UNDP stressed that migrant health cannot remain solely the job of health ministries. She highlighted the treatment of tuberculosis across Afghanistan, Iran, and Pakistan, where patients frequently lose access to life-saving care simply because neighboring countries fail to share data and coordinate cross-border pathways. Closing these gaps demands direct collaboration between social services, housing authorities, immigration agencies, and the migrant communities themselves.
Gabriele Fontana, Regional Health Advisor at UNICEF, called for a fundamental shift in how aid is delivered. While emergency humanitarian assistance is critical during acute crises, parallel services cannot run indefinitely. Fontana emphasized that emergency aid must act as a temporary bridge into the national healthcare system rather than a permanent substitute. Displaced families need primary care doctors, routine vaccinations, and mental health support. To prevent vital services from disappearing when donor grants expire, integration, local staff training, and sustainable financing must be planned from day one.
The discussion also tackled the invisible barriers that lock people out of care. Roberta Bojang, representing the Migration Youth and Children Platform, presented insights from consultations with over 800 young migrants. Even when legal access exists on paper, youth face intense hurdles navigating complex administrative systems, overcoming language gaps, and dealing with stigma around reproductive and mental healthcare. Bojang argued that young people should not be invited merely for token consultations; they must have real decision-making power over program design, digital testing, and budgets. Panelists also warned that strict legal firewalls must separate healthcare from immigration enforcement, ensuring that fear of deportation never prevents someone from seeing a doctor.
Taking a structural perspective, Daniela Rodriguez from the Alliance for Health Policy and Systems Research urged experts to track systemic breakdowns, whether in uncoordinated bureaucracy or unacknowledged foreign medical documents. She also challenged the traditional dynamic of global research, calling for international funding and leadership to be placed directly in the hands of local universities and grassroots organizations in affected regions.
Ultimately, the panel concluded that investing in migrant-inclusive healthcare is not an added burden: by strengthening primary care, translation, and referral networks, governments build a more resilient and equitable system for host communities as well.