Asociación Mi-Health contra el VIH

Since 2022, we have been coordinating a community-led initiative to address the gaps in the HIV continuum of care amongst key migrant communities across 9 European countries with a high prevalence of HIV. It is well documented that migrants are diagnosed later than the general European population, and we are delivering activities that are appropriate to the needs of the diverse communities that our partnership represents to overcome some of the barriers that migrants face both in terms of service provision and uptake of HIV testing services. In 2024, we began work with Maastricht University researchers to better analyze data from our HIV testing programmes, helping us advocate more effectively for migrant health equity in Europe.

We hope that our partnership continues to result in community-driven solutions that reach migrant communities at a time when the same social, political and economic inequalities that increase vulnerability to HIV and other risks are deepening across the region. We believe that effective, agile partnerships that resource frontline organisations across jurisdictions have the potential to address the worsening precarity of migrants and other vulnerable groups everywhere. 

We are a partnership of 9 organisations:

Colectivamente, apoyamos a los siguientes grupos clave de migrantes: solicitantes de asilo, refugiados, apátridas, trabajadores sexuales trans y LGBTQI+, migrantes del África subsahariana y HSH.

Activities to date:

• Co-produced 54 materials on U=U, PrEP and HIV testing in 9 languages, utilising 68 peer community HIV champions to disseminate 17,020 materials to migrants
• Cultivated a quarterly community exchange forum for frontline organisations to pool expertise and find solutions for common challenges
• Built capacity of partner organisations by providing tools, resources to try new service delivery approaches, and trainings
• Tested 2,402 migrants for HIV from April 2022 – March 2023
• Linked 1,071 migrants into healthcare
• Gathered high-quality, disaggregated data on migrants that to our knowledge has never been collected in EU/EEA
• Presented results from our partnership at 5 international conferences: Fast-Track Cities 2023, EACS 2023, HepHIV 2023, the National Congress of the Italian Society of Migration Medicine 2024 and AIDS 2024
• Won both the Impact and People’s Choice awards at the Gilead Community Awards 2023 for our work
• Convened a first-of-its-kind summit on migration and HIV with 112 delegates from 21 European countries to identify gaps impeding the realisation of universal healthcare for migrants
• Launched a position paper calling for the realisation of universal healthcare for all regardless of immigration status

We are grateful to Gilead Sciences Europe for their continued support of this initiative.

We welcome you to contact us if you have questions or would like to learn more about our Mi-Health HIV Partnership Europe.