•MANY countries the world over remain sceptical about allowing direct flights to and from countries affected by the Ebola virus.

By STEPHEN KAPAMBWE? –

NEVER has the issue of migration and health been so topical than in the wake of the outbreak of the Ebola virus in some West African countries and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).
The extent to which countries have gone to deal with the Ebola outbreak, for example, recently dominated the debate concerning which country hosts the 2015 African Nations Cup soccer tournament.
After what appeared to be a standoff, the Confederation of African Football (CAF) stripped Morocco of rights to host or be part of the tournament in preference for Equatorial Guinea after the former expressed fears over the spread of Ebola.
Not only that, it is not too long when Botswana stopped copper laden truckers travelling from the DRC, via Zambia, from passing through that country on their way to South Africa, over Ebola fears.
That led to hundreds of trucks being stranded at the Kazungula border for weeks until the World Health Organisation (WHO) intervened.
Even now, many countries the world over remain sceptical about allowing direct flights to and fro countries affected by the virus.
However, Ebola is not the only disease that has impacted migration.?Zambians travelling to South Africa are required to be vaccinated against yellow fever.
This is in spite of arguments by the Zambian Government that the country has been certified yellow fever free by WHO save for occasional cases of the wild strain of the disease that sometimes spills over from Angola into local communities on the western border.
Recently, the International Organidation for Migration (IOM) hosted a one-day workshop at Grand Palace Hotel in Lusaka to help the local media appreciate the issue of migration and health.?The IOM also hoped to work with the media towards improved and balanced reporting as regards coverage of migration.
IOM Migration Health Officer Nomagugu Ncube said the media have an important role to play because of their ability to present issues with particular focus.
‘‘ For example, what you report about Ebola here in Zambia determines how people will view the virus because in this part of the world, Ebola is not common,” she said.
Understanding the role the media plays in covering migration issues is especially important for a country like Zambia which is surrounded by eight neighbouring countries that require products and services to be transported through Zambia.
By virtue of being centrally located, Zambia is a transit country through which many people access other parts of Africa.
This means Zambia cannot avoid migration.
However, in understanding what migration is and what health issues arise as a result of population movements, the media has a role to pray in shaping public opinion on the matter.
In the words of acting director of migration observatory at the University of Oxford Scott Blinder, ‘‘Understanding the language newspapers use to describe migrants helps shine a light on how they (the newspapers or the media) are playing their role in the complicated relationship between media, politics and public opinion.”
This statement comes from a report on a comprehensive analysis of more than 40 million words used by British national newspapers to describe migrants.
Findings of the analysis were published in the Migration Observatory at Oxford University last year.?The findings showed that British newspapers described migrants as mostly being ‘illegal’ and ‘non-European.’?Asylum seekers were mostly said to be ‘failed’, while the description of refugees tended to cast them in the light of ‘escaping from conflict,’ and child migrants as being largely ‘vulnerable’ and/or?‘destitute.’
As regards to numbers, migrants were described in terms of being ‘thousands,’ and in terms of security, they were associated with words like ‘economic terrorists,’ or ‘suspects.’
The analysis went on to say ‘…words related to flows of water, such as ‘influx’ and less frequently ‘wave’ and ‘flood,’ were used by all types of newspapers in association with migration.’
“Our data show that illegality, the failure of asylum claims and the size of migration inflows and populations are clear focal points for newspapers of all types.
“It is extremely difficult to untangle whether media drives public opinion about a subject, or whether it is politics or public opinion that drives media coverage, or some of each other,” Dr Blinder said.
In as much as the media may or may not drive public opinion, their use of certain words to describe migrants perpetuates certain stereotypes as has been seen above.
Because of stereotyping perpetrated by the media, local populations tend to treat migrants with suspicion and feel the new comers take the jobs, wealth and health services meant for the local population.
According to IOM Migration Health and Gender Assistant Emmanuel Sinkala, a migrant is a person who moves either across an international border, or within a country.
Such a person could be a refugee, a displaced person, a person moving for economic reasons, or a person seeking family reunification.
Such movement could be forced or voluntary.
Migration is forced when people move against their will, such as refugees fleeing from conflict, asylum seekers and people forced to move due to external factors, climate change or environmental disasters like volcanic eruptions, and etcetera.
Children of migrants, military conscription and victims of human trafficking are forms of forced migration because the person moving has no role in the decision making process.
Non-forced migration happens when people move voluntarily, such as those seeking to reunite with their families, tourists or holiday markers traveling for the fun of it, truck drivers who move because of the nature of their work, refugees who agree to be repatriated to their countries of origin, and expatriates who migrate for economic reasons.
Migration can be international, across boundaries of countries, or it can be national, within a country, or local, within a city or a region.
Now, migration comes with health issues in the form of communicable diseases that do not respect borders.
This is especially as a result of the significant increase in mobility due to current rapid means of transportation that allows for diseases to move from one continent to another in less than 24 hours.?Communicable diseases could be caused by pathogenic microorganisms, such as bacteria, viruses, parasites or fungi.
The diseases can be spread, directly or indirectly, from one person to another.
According to WHO, transmission modes of diseases could be food-borne and waterborne diseases which are transmitted by consumption of contaminated food and water; vector-borne diseases which are transmitted by insects such as mosquitoes and ticks; sexually transmitted diseases which are passed from person to person through unsafe sexual practices.
Others are blood-borne diseases transmitted by direct contact with infected blood or other bodily fluids; airborne diseases which are transmitted through the air (from person to person by cough or sneezing); and diseases transmitted through contaminated soil (e.g. diseases caused by spores like tetanus).
All these make human mobility to be a significant public health issue both in terms of epidemiological aspects of diseases and physical access to health services.
For instance migration has, according to the IOM, been identified as contributing to the re-emergence of malaria.?Migration may increase exposure to a disease, for example, by transporting mosquitoes to new areas and/or creating habitats that are favourable to mosquitoes.
Migration may also help the spread of new strains of a disease as well as lead to disease resistance to drugs.
Irregular migrants, who are unable to access health services for fear of arrest, may put local populations at risk.
Oftentimes, children of migrants do not have access to essential health services such as vaccinations against measles.
For example, the lack of immunisation among children frequently results in outbreaks of measles among migrants and the host community in neighbourhoods such as Eastleigh Estate in Nairobi.
In order to ensure that the developmental benefits of migration are realised, a process of ‘healthy migration’ needs to be facilitated.
This means focusing on the health of internal and trans-boundary migrant and mobile populations.?In order to achieve this, migration needs to be included within the public health response and other social services.
For healthy migration, all levels of government need to mainstream internal and cross-border movement into policies and programmes.
This will ensure that all migrant populations are able to access public healthcare systems.
For example, the Zambian Government has in the last few years actively involved migrant populations like international truck drivers, sex workers and local communities in developing sustainable programmes aimed at controlling the spread of HIV/AIDS in so called high-risk?populations.
This is in line with the Zambia Demographic and Health Survey (ZDHS) findings and recommendations of 2007 that put the country among regions in Africa hardest hit by the HIV and AIDS epidemic.
The survey put the national HIV prevalence at an estimated 14.3 per cent in the general population aged 15-49 years.
This shows that when it comes to health, migration cannot be treated in isolation.