Roma Access to Health Care

13 January 2005

Roma Access to Health Care

In 2005 the ERRC launches targeted research into access of Roma to health care services in Bulgaria, Hungary and Spain with support from the Open Society Institute Public Health Program. The project activities are designed to identify major barriers facing Roma in access to health care, including structural disadvantages resulting from the operation of general policies and administrative practices such as the
disproportionate exclusion of Roma from health insurance; barriers to access to health care and other disparate impacts on the health of Roma stemming from continuing discrimination in other areas such as education, housing and employment, as well as from discriminatory practices by health care practitioners. Furthermore, the research will seek to document barriers to quality health care facing Romani women as a result of the compounded influence of race and gender. The findings of the research will serve for the formulation of policy recommendations to national governments and donor organisations pursuing the goal of remedying health inequalities facing Roma.