WHO Calls for Migrants and Refugees to Be Built Into Pandemic Preparedness
WHO, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, and the International Organization for Migration used a high-level roundtable on the margins of the UN General Assembly to press for a different model of pandemic prevention, preparedness and response: one that treats migrants, refugees and displaced populations as part of the core public health system rather than as an afterthought. The discussion in New York brought together Member States, UN agencies, civil society, the private sector and youth networks, reflecting a broad recognition that mobility is not a side issue in outbreak control. It is central to it.
The core message was blunt. Inclusive pandemic preparedness cannot be built by one sector acting alone. Human mobility crosses jurisdictions, disrupts continuity of care, and exposes long-standing gaps in access, surveillance and communication. When systems are designed only around fixed populations, they miss the people most likely to fall through administrative and geographic cracks during a crisis.
Preparedness Has to Survive Outside the Emergency Moment
A major theme was the need to stop treating preparedness as a temporary surge activity triggered only when a crisis is already underway. Instead, preparedness needs to be embedded in routine health systems, sustained during periods of calm, and linked to primary care and continuity of treatment. For mobile populations, that shift is not academic. Interruptions in vaccination, maternal care, chronic disease management and follow-up can quickly become public health liabilities when movement accelerates and services fragment.
This model also changes the operational logic of response. If national systems are built with human mobility in mind, then coordination across borders, referral pathways and continuity of records become part of the baseline design. That matters for anyone moving through multiple health jurisdictions during a pandemic, refugee emergency or broader humanitarian crisis.
Trust Drives Uptake When Formal Systems Do Not Reach Far Enough
Community engagement emerged as one of the strongest threads in the discussion. Migrant and displaced communities were framed not as passive recipients of messaging but as active partners in surveillance, risk communication and decision-making. Community health workers, local organizations, youth networks and other trusted intermediaries can bridge the gap between formal institutions and people who may be wary of state systems or unable to access them easily.
“Trust travels further than trucks” captured that reality in a single line. Public health logistics can deliver commodities, but they do not automatically deliver confidence, especially when legal status, language barriers or prior discrimination shape whether people come forward for care. In epidemic control, trust determines whether people report symptoms early, accept vaccination, follow isolation guidance and engage with contact tracing.
Administrative Barriers Still Shape Who Gets Care
The roundtable identified legal status, documentation requirements, language barriers and geographic isolation as persistent obstacles to equitable access. These are not abstract policy concerns. They determine whether a person can register at a clinic, obtain information in a language they understand, or reach a facility before illness worsens. They also shape whether health authorities receive timely information about outbreaks along migration routes or in informal settlements.
Removing those barriers requires more than outreach. It demands policies that reduce the penalty for being mobile, undocumented or displaced. It also requires health systems that are flexible enough to serve people whose lives do not fit neatly into resident-based service models. Without that flexibility, preparedness plans may look comprehensive on paper while leaving the highest-risk populations exposed in practice.
Data Gaps Limit Response Along Migration Routes
Participants also pointed to the need for migration- and displacement-sensitive data systems. Better data are essential for understanding vulnerability, mapping mobility patterns, and identifying where continuity of care is breaking down across borders. In a pandemic, those gaps can obscure transmission corridors, delay resource allocation and weaken the ability to target interventions where they are most needed.
Data systems must be designed with ethics and protection in mind, but the need for better evidence is real. Mobility is dynamic, and public health systems that cannot see movement will struggle to plan for it. Cross-border coordination depends on information that is timely enough to support action and precise enough to guide services without exposing people to harm.
Misinformation Can Push People Away from Care
The roundtable also addressed stigma, misinformation and narratives that cast migrants and displaced people as threats to health or security. Those narratives do measurable damage. They erode trust, discourage care-seeking and distort policymaking toward exclusion rather than protection. During outbreaks, fear-driven messaging can be as disruptive as any logistical bottleneck.
Evidence-based communication and trusted community voices were presented as essential counterweights. Public health messaging works best when it is credible to the people it is trying to reach. For migrant women, youth and displaced families, that credibility often depends on whether the messenger understands their lived reality and speaks to their actual barriers, not just the disease itself.
Youth, Women and Cross-Sector Coordination Were Treated as Core Infrastructure
The discussion gave explicit attention to the role of migrant women and youth, who were described as partners and contributors whose perspectives should inform policy, programming and decision-making. Their inclusion is not symbolic. Women and young people often see early changes in household vulnerability, service access and community trust, and they are frequently the first to feel the effects of service disruption.
The roundtable also emphasized the need for multi-stakeholder coordination across governments, UN agencies, civil society and the private sector. Fragmented approaches leave gaps in financing, implementation and accountability. Cross-sector collaboration becomes even more important when care must follow people across borders and when public health measures intersect with migration governance, humanitarian response and local service delivery.
Representatives from Egypt, Armenia, UNHCR, UNICEF, UN Women, the International Rescue Committee, the Migration Youth and Children Platform and the International Pharmaceutical Federation joined the co-organizing agencies in the discussion. Their presence reflected the practical reality behind the policy message: inclusive preparedness requires a system capable of working across mandates, sectors and borders.
The roundtable did not produce a clinical endpoint or a trial result. It did produce a clear policy directive. Pandemic preparedness that excludes migrants, refugees and displaced people leaves surveillance incomplete, weakens response capacity and prolongs avoidable harm. The remaining challenge is implementation: whether national plans, financing streams and cross-border agreements can be redesigned quickly enough to make inclusion routine rather than rhetorical.