Paper short abstract:

The Roma are one of the groups that has the worst health conditions and whit which medical professionals have the biggest relational difficulties. Is the concept of culture an adequate source of explanation? The answer is rather an integrated approach that address the roots of structural vulnerability.

Paper long abstract:

The concept of structural vulnerability is particularly useful to explain the health conditions of Roma migrants. The situation of the Roma is an example of "extreme" fundamental rights at risk and it shows that health is unevenly distributed across the population. In the Roma case the four criteria of availability, accessibility, acceptability, and quality are rarely met by the National health Service. Evidence from a research in the city of Turin, Italy, confirms that barriers to access are closely linked to social exclusion factors, specifically:

1) A lack of knowledge of available health care systems also due to language and literacy barriers; 2)Physical barriers, mobility and distance; 3) A lack of trust in health professionals; 4) Discrimination by health care professionals. Health professionals may not realise that the Roma's apparent disregard for their health is sometimes a response to the inadequacy of the healthcare they are offered. In some doctor-patient interactions, perceptions of cultural difference or otherness seem to overrule all other motivations, becoming the only source of understanding. Medical professionals interprets attitudes and behaviours as 'cultural' when, instead, they are simply engendered by poverty. In this paper I show how a full right to health could be reach only taking in consideration all the variables that are the basis of Roma structural vulnerability.