It is a well-known fact in health research that patients move between the sectors of professional medical care, various self-care methods and traditional healing methods. In the case of migrants the search for a remedy crosses not only borders between these different health-care sectors but also national borders. This calls for an enlargement of the preceding concept of "medical pluralism". The aim of the study was to explore how ill Somali migrants, particularly in Finland, act in the context of cultural meaning-making, transnational life-world and social relationships. The data were collected by transnational ethnography in years 2005–2006. Somalis in exile travel to Somalia in particular when the aetiology of illness is connected to explanatory models that derive from the Somali culture. Transnational health-care is a challenge to the Finnish health-care, which often is not familiar with the overall situation of migrant families and the use of non-medical care. Transnational treatment may be a resource for a migrant patient, but it may also involve problems.