Every Thursday, the waiting room of the Médecins du Monde Clinic buzzes with activity. At reception, triage volunteers check each person’s eligibility. Conversations in several languages can be heard, and women of all ages and facing all kinds of situations are seen.
All these women live here, but their precarious immigration status gives them no access to health coverage.
Yet throughout their lives, women need health services specifically related to their condition as women.
My name is Caroline, and I am a social worker at Médecins du Monde. Some of the women I meet sometimes have to forgo necessary follow-ups and care due to their socioeconomic or psychosocial situation, which has a direct impact on their health.
My work involves assessing their needs and their migration journey, as well as the possibility of regularizing their status or accessing medical coverage. I also refer them to community organizations that can meet their needs. Together with my nurse colleagues, outreach workers, and migrant peers, I support each woman based on the decision she chooses to make for her body, her health, and her fertility.
The Médecins du Monde Clinic is often their only recourse: they cannot afford private insurance or pay medical fees amounting to several hundred or thousands of dollars before even receiving the necessary services—especially since they are charged a 200% surcharge by Quebec’s public network institutions and most doctors.
For them, paying medical fees directly means no access.
Every year, nearly 300 migrant women come to our Clinic, but the needs are growing, and our resources are limited.
Each week, thanks to your donations, resources are exclusively dedicated to women. We support women to ensure their overall sexual and reproductive health.
In their unique life journeys, these women show incredible strength to move forward in a system that excludes them, even though they have often lived here for several years.
Until the law is changed to grant these women the right to health, my colleagues and I need your generosity to enable us to care for and support them.
Thank you for your solidarity!
Read the report: Precarious immigration status, precarious health