There are many asylum seekers and refugees that are in need of medical attention and psychological support. The outpatient clinic, located next to the soup kitchen, was opened in 1995 for them. Every afternoon, in Via degli Astalli, the rooms fill up with people seeking medical care, psychological assistance, or even just information on their rights to health care. Apart from a restricted number of staff members and the psychologist, the heart of the outpatient center consists of volunteer doctors that lend their time and their professionalism to asylum seekers and refugees.

The primary objective of the outpatient clinic is to provide guidance on the public health care system: the majority of the immigrants who pass through the Center in fact have the right to health care from the National Health Care Services. In other words, they can turn to the public system just like Italians can. Unfortunately, the day-to-day experiences at Astalli’s outpatient clinic demonstrate that this right can only rarely be exercised. To the more obvious linguistic and cultural obstacles are often added scarce awareness of their rights on the part of foreigners, and a failed knowledge on the part of health care operators of these same rights.

In the winter the number of individuals using the system inevitably increases: all the discomforts of those living on the streets are added to deep wounds of torture, traumas undergone during the voyage and other more serious pathologies. Thanks to both a contract with the Banco Farmaceutico (Pharmaceutical Bank), which distributes collected pharmaceuticals each year, and the support of a number of private pharmacies, which periodically make donations of medicine, the outpatient clinic manages to address the poverty and need into which many refugee patients are cast.

Because the preservation of health also becomes an opportunity for integration, since 2004 Centro Astalli’s outpatient center has coordinated, with periodic meetings, the work of Gris (Gruppo Immigrazione Salute, or Immigration Health Group). This working group comprises the ASL (Azienda Sanitaria Locale, or Local Health Care Firms), the Commune of Rome and various territorial associations in the sector.

In 2007, the SaMiFo Project (Center for the Health for Forced Migrants) was created. This service was given life by the conviction of the utility of creating a connecting place between a reality specifically dedicated to forced migrants (like Centro Astalli’s outpatient clinic) and the world of public health care.