Arriving migrants to get medical tests at new centre

Migrants arriving in Malta will be screened for infectious diseases at a reception clinic when they land before being sent to detention centres.

The tests will be carried out in a Third Party Nationals Reception Centre, announced last week in the 2010 Budget with an allocation of €300,000.

Those suffering from any infectious diseases can be treated on the spot before moving on to closed centres.

Asked whether the centre has been built, a Health Parliamentary Secretariat spokesman said the authorities were still trying to identify the best location.

The screening will include tests for tuberculosis, for which migrants are regularly checked since certain parts of Africa, where most migrants come from, are susceptible to the infectious disease that mainly affects the lungs.

Illegal immigrants are screened in their first week in Malta and are isolated if they are suffering from an active form of TB, as it can spread.

Some 5,000 chest X-rays were carried out on immigrants last year as part of a tuberculosis screening programme but only 29 indicated pulmonary TB. Another nine were diagnosed with extra-pulmonary tuberculosis.

Figures from the Disease Surveillance Unit show there were 36 cases of pulmonary tuberculosis between January and September, 27 of which were in non-residents.