Skin Diseases in Refugees

People anywhere and anytime move from one place to another for a better, safer, and healthier life. The movement started a long time ago when homo species gained an upright posture and needed to move to find more animals to hunt and more land to cultivate for their social group. The displaced person who has been forced to cross national boundaries and who cannot return home safely has been named a refugee. In the first period of 2022 (October 2022), 109,709 people entered Europe (total arrivals), including sea (103,389) and land (6320) arrivals. The skin is a mirror that tells previous experiences starting from food/water availability and quality to hygiene, WASH quality, and dangerous environment, including chemical poisons (sea water plus gasoline mixture), long sun exposure, human violence, and self-injuring. When migrants arrive in Italy, the skin pathological conditions most frequently observed are scabies, skin and soft tissue infections, itch, pediculosis, dermatitis, insect bites, and burns. Dermatologists may be the first and only physicians to find a lesion suggestive of torture, considering that skin alterations may show the most evident changes or signs of torture.