Cambodia: Detecting, treating TB in vulnerable migrants
Channel: IOM - UN Migration
Date: 2013-03-20

Many Cambodians migrate across the border into Thailand to work as low skilled, undocumented migrants to support their poverty-stricken families. Unemployment, loss of land, food insecurity and debt in their home provinces are the underlying push factors.

While in Thailand, their access to health care is extremely limited and the time many of them spend in crowded immigration detention centres leaves them at risk of Tuberculosis and other health problems. Many undocumented Cambodian migrants are detained and deported from Thailand to the Cambodian border town of Poipet on without any health screening or social support.  

In 2012, through the international TB REACH programme, IOM and the National TB program in Cambodia, established systematic TB screening for arriving migrants. 

About 6,000 returned migrants have been screened so far with 126 detected with TB and over 90 per cent successfully put on treatment and cured. In 2013, IOM is seeking further funding support to continue this active TB case finding, including expanding screening for other communicable diseases, such as HIV and Malaria among migrant mobile populations in border areas.