Some specific
barriers impede the normal integration of the immigrant in the healthcare
system, and those barriers are augmented in non-legal immigrants.
Pharmacists can contribute in improving immigrants’ healthcare and
pharmaceutical care.
Objective: To analyze pharmaceutical care received and drug accessibility
of non-legal immigrants in the area of Campo de Gibraltar.
Methods: We carried out personal interviews to immigrants. Questionnaires
translated into three languages (Arabian English and French) were
validated (translation retro-translation) and used. Two translators
interviewed the immigrants in one of those languages, the one chosen
by the interviewed patient.
Results: Immigrants present negative clinical outcomes associated
with their medication and economic difficulties to acquire their
medicines. To improve pharmaceutical care they are receiving, they
demand more information on their illnesses, the use of their medicines,
and bigger accessibility to them.
Conclusions: Immigrants were not worried about health care or pharmaceutical
care, because they have other major worries produced by their legal
status. Nevertheless, they constitute a group with higher risk of
presenting negative clinical outcomes of medication. Medicines’
expenditure constitutes a barrier to the healthcare process, reduced
by NGOs.
