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The report details the health, moral and economic cost of the lack of healthcare policy for asylum seekers living in Israel. A decade has gone by since the first African asylum seekers arrived in Israel. Still, the Ministry of Health has failed to formulate a comprehensive policy to regulate their access to health services. Partial and sporadic services offered by the Ministry of Health are in adequate, and leave many without proper medical care. Many are forced to wait until their situation deteriorated to such a degree to make them eligible to receive treatment under the Patient Right Act (emergency only).
Israel is now home to almost 40,000 African asylum seekers, mostly from Eritrea and Sudan. Israel recognizes the danger they face should they return to their countries of origin, and therefore protects them against expulsion. Beyond this protection, however, these people lack any civil status in Israel, and accordingly remain without regular access to health and welfare services, except in emergencies.
A decade has gone by since the first African asylum seekers arrived in Israel. Still, the Ministry of Health has failed to formulate a comprehensive policy to regulate their access to health services. The following report details the costs of this failure – the health, moral and economic cost of the lack of healthcare policy for asylum seekers. It then offers an alternative: a sustainable solution for that population that includes a state-sponsored insurance arrangement.
The Ministry of Health is already aware of the hopelessly dis-satisfactory level of the existing treatment solutions for asylum seekers. According to senior ministry officials, their hands are tied, since now more than ever, as the Ministry of the Interior acts to deport asylum seekers and dissuade others from arriving, the Ministry of Health is prevented from improving the living conditions of these inhabitants. But perhaps now is precisely the time for the Ministry of Health to take into due account the broad range of independent considerations directly relevant to its mandate and formulate a sustainable health policy for the community of asylum seekers living among us. Now is the time for the ministry to make a stand and provide full and equal health services to that community, to alleviate their distress rather than add to their suffering.