Emergency Within Emergency: The Impact of the Pandemic on Local Governance of Immigrant Health

The purpose of this research is to analyse the way local governance has reacted to the COVID-19 Pandemic and the resulting health emergency, with a particular focus on migrant health protection in the Apulia region. The WHO Europe affirms that the right to health is a basic human right; this affirmation becomes even more crucial in this period of COVID-19 Pandemic that has created emergency within emergency, particularly for those involved in the reception system of asylum seekers. The Apulian context represents an exception in the Italian national territory, so it deserves to be explored more in-depth. Thanks to regional autonomy (determined by the Italian Constitution) in offering health services, this Region was able to extend the medical treatments and services provided for Italians and regular migrants to those irregular ones as well. Furthermore, the regional administration is the main coordinator of a FAMI2 project aimed at implementing the health of migrants which involves various departments of the University of Bari, public bodies, and non-profit organisations. Recently, the activities and budget of this project have been revised considering the health emergency that has arisen, directing them towards anti-Covid measures in favour of migrants, the ultimate beneficiaries of the project. In addition to local governance, the impact of COVID-19 Pandemic was also felt in the management of reception centres, which had to revise their ordinary management, adopting immediate measures, including the translation of anti-Covid precautionary measures in almost all the languages of the guests present. It worth mentioning, however, that regional autonomy created some disruptions in the governance of health access in particular for vulnerable groups, such as asylum seekers and irregular migrants. Furthermore, the COVID-19 Pandemic, which destabilised the NHS, has strengthened the existing inequalities in terms of access to public health care of these disadvantaged groups. Some measures have been adopted to address this inequality, but this research shows that there is still much to be done.