significance for public health

Migrants are found to be a population group with specific
health risks. Their access to health and social care
facilities is often limited compared to that of the indigenous
population. These now well-known facts were explored
and discussed in health sciences for several decades.
More recently, the impact of these facts on the ageing
migrant population has become apparent. Several
discourses reflecting global and regional developments
contributed to this attention: The fact that global ageing
will be pervasive and enduring and that this development will be accompanied
by an epidemiological transition boosting chronic and
old-age-related diseases led to new priorities in health
care planning and delivery. Gerontological and geriatric
aspects of care are now a major issue. This includes
a growing awareness of the most vulnerable groups
among the ageing population. The growing significance of migrants is also stressed by the sheer number of migrants world wide, and the expected increase in this number.
As a consequence, health planning and delivery have to
take the constantly growing population group of elderly
migrants into account on a regional scale. This is experienced
as an unprecedented challenge, especially by countries which recruited migrant workers in the 1960s
and 1970s in large numbers (in Europe: Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Austria). Elderly migrants are
a rapidly growing population group in these countries, as the available data of the European Union
show . European countries with a colonial past like France and United Kingdom had different
immigration patterns which lead to a slightly less pointed population distribution with regard to the
ageing population. Nevertheless, ageing minorities pose also in these countries a specific
challenge for planning of care. In addition, a broader diversity of ethnic and language groups among
the ageing migrant population has to be considered.
Thus, in many countries, specific demands of a rapidly growing ageing migrant population group have to
be identified and new structures and resources for adequate care need to be created within a short period of time.