Case report
A multidisciplinary approach to engage VFR migrants in Madrid, Spain

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Summary

VFRs are at a greater risk of contracting travel-related illnesses such as malaria, and their knowledge about travel health tends to be poor. Since 2009, community-based activities targeting potential and impending VFRs were performed by a multidisciplinary team in Madrid, Spain. The design and distribution of multilingual and culturally-sensitive material following a qualitative research, and intercultural mediators were key tools of the health education programme.

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Brief report

The term VFRs refers to those travellers visiting friends and relatives, who tend to be migrants. This population is at a higher risk for contracting travel-related illnesses when compared to other groups of travellers.1, 2, 3 The lack of risk perception by VFRs when travelling to their countries of origin and the consequent poor seeking for pre-travel health advice play a main role on it. In addition, their level of knowledge about travel health tends to be poor.4 To devise novel and adapted

Conflict of interest

None declared.

Acknowledgements

VFRs' activities are framed in the health education programme aimed at migrants in Spain (‘New citizens, new patients’) and supported by sanofi-aventis.

Website's design (www.saludentreculturas.es) was supported by Vodafone España.

Authors' affiliation centre belongs to the Red de Investigación Cooperativa en Enfermedades Tropicales (RICET). RED: RD06/0021/0020.

We thank Serigne Fall and Alban Kouakou, intercultural mediators, for their support. Both did convey the individual travel-health

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