Palliative Care is a Useful Means to Overcome Intercultural Barriers Faced by Refugees in their New Host Countries

The unprecedented wave of refugee migration from Africa and the Middle East to Europe presents major challenges to European health professionals and to society at large. A recent workshop which took place in Syracuse, Sicily, brought together physicians, nurses and psychologists and managers of governmental agencies from Italy, Lebanon, Israel, Iraq, Iran, Sudan, Tunisia, Jordan, and the European Society of Medical Oncology, aimed to create a training program to formulate a dialogue between professionals in their regions and refugees in Italy. A major barrier refugees face is a lack of communication (verbal and cultural) which hinders their smooth absorption into society. Cultural mediators who speak Arabic and Italian and understand the refugees’ faith, tradition and beliefs, are paramount to successfully building bridges between such diversities. Predictably, most asylum seekers undergo anxiety, fear, and depression after arriving in Europe. Following intensive deliberations, all workshop participants agreed that applying palliative care methodologies, as practiced in cancer patients, would be therapeutically advantageous in overcoming the psychological suffering that refugees experience during their initial stay in Europe. Accordingly, all agreed to start with training courses, both in refugees’ countries of origin and in Europe, for representatives or mediators (preferably with some clinical background and experience); whereby tremendous efforts would be made to create a working palliative care model that includes bio-psycho-social elements. This model or paradigm will employ a culturally sensitive approach that takes refugees’ spiritual needs into consideration, relying on core ethical principles.