Diritto dell'immigrazione e problematiche sanitarie: le nuove frontiere

The exponential increase in migratory flows poses the problem of revising therapeutic protocols from an ethical and legal standpoint. In a multicultural context, doctor and patient can easily belong to very different social and cultural environments. This phenomenon gives rise to “complex therapeutic relationships”, within which health care providers know that patients do not always share scientific references and some key concepts such as illness, health, diagnosis and prognosis, because of their culture of origin. There is no natural “social contract” in this area between those who suffer and those who should provide care. The doctor must therefore try out innovative and unconventional approaches. As such, an articulated, gnoseological and multidisciplinary reflection is required to address the therapeutic-relational issues signaled, considering them from different standpoints. There are intuitive levels of misunderstanding, some of which are very easy to imagine, such as those related to linguistic and religious diversity. The encounter with the “other” creates dependent “relational short circuits”, as well as specific cultural diversity (e.g. rare or little-known illnesses) and a profound discontinuity of the organizational models of Western medicine.