Author: Nargis Hamrabayeva, Tajikistan
A big amount of working age population in Tajikistan (where the entire population is eight million people) take part in labour migration to Russia. After their return to homeland, migrants get diagnosed with tuberculosis and HIV.
A 32-year-old labour migrant from Tajikistan named Shody has just returned from Russia. The doctors have diagnosed him with tuberculosis. The man states that he spent six years working in Russia. He went back home only a couple of times during that period.
The fear of deportation – reason for tuberculosis
“I worked at the construction site. Along with several other fellow countrymen we lived in damp and cold premises. A year ago, I started feeling weak, suffered from continuous coughing, but did not seek any medical advice. First of all, I did not have spare money, and secondly, I was afraid to lose my job. If I was diagnosed with tuberculosis, I would have been deported. Who would take care of my family then? Every day I felt weaker and weaker and I had to buy the ticket home,” told the migrant. Now Shody gets the necessary treatment according to the anti-tuberculosis programme, and his health is getting better.
A few years ago, the results of the research on tuberculosis spread prevention were revealed in Dushanbe. These results have shown that hundreds of Tajik migrants return from Russia with tuberculosis.
Experts say that around 20%, or every fifth patient, from the newly diagnosed patients turn out to be labour migrants.
“For instance, in 2015, 1007 people (which is 19.7% cases from the entire number of patients diagnosed with tuberculosis) were labour migrants. In 2016 there were 927 or more than 17%,” Zoirdzhon Abduloyev, the deputy director of the Republican Centre of Population Protection from Tuberculosis in Tajikistan says.
According to him, the research has shown that most of the migrants became infected during their labour migration period.
“The main factors that lead to the spread of this disease among migrants are the poor living conditions. Big amounts of people in small areas, unsanitary conditions and poor nutrition, late visits to the doctors, and most importantly the fear of deportation from Russia,” says Abduloyev.
HIV is “brought” due to the migration
Many experts say the same thing about the spread of HIV in Tajikistan. That “it is being brought from there, due to the migration.”
Dilshod Sayburkhanov, deputy director of the Republican HIV/AIDS centre in Tajikistan, says that big number of Tajik migrants go to work in countries with significantly higher HIV prevalence rate compared to Tajikistan. Usually these are seasonal migrations, and after the end of the season migrants come home.
“Official statistical data shows the dynamical growth of the number of people who have been in labour migration among the new cases of HIV in Tajikistan. In 2015, there were 165 people diagnosed with HIV, whose tests were marked under the labour migrant category. Among them there were 151 men and 14 women, which is 14.3% from the whole number of new HIV cases. In 2016 – 155 (14.8%), in the first half of 2017 – 82 people (13.1%). In 2012, 65 migrants (7.7%) were diagnosed as HIV-positive,” says Sayburkhanov.
Statistics demonstrates the connection between international Tajik labour migration and the growth of new identified HIV cases, according to him.
Ulugbek Aminov, state UNAIDS manager in Tajikistan, also agrees with this. He thinks that migration and HIV are closely connected and result in a social phenomenon.
“There is an assumption that migrants, being in tough emotional and physical conditions, can behave insecurely in terms of HIV and thus have risks of the virus transmission in destination countries. Tajikistan HIV import issue is still in need of an in-depth study,” believes Ulugbek.
It is important to consider that migrants often represent vulnerable to HIV groups of population (for example people who inject drugs), and not knowing their pre-migration HIV status complicates the future process of HIV monitoring. Apart from that, the chances for migrant to receive the necessary specialized treatment go down. The treatment would prevent the spread of HIV to migrant wives and partners in their home country.
“Therefore, experts’ first priority task is the timely identification and quality monitoring of the disease in the countries where migrant live and transfer to, until the return of the migrant back home,” notes Ulugbek Aminov.
Experts believe that there should be a complex of prevention activities for HIV, sexually transmitted diseases and tuberculosis among such vulnerable groups as migrants and their sexual partners.
