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A cross-sectional investigation of the health needs of asylum seekers in a refugee clinic in Germany

BACKGROUND: Over one million asylum seekers were registered in Germany in 2016, most from Syria and Afghanistan. The Refugee Convention guarantees access to healthcare, however delivery mechanisms remain heterogeneous. There is an urgent need for more data describing the health conditions of asylum...

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Autores principales: Goodman, Laura F., Jensen, Guy W., Galante, Joseph M., Farmer, Diana L., Taché, Stephanie
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5956552/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29769017
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12875-018-0758-x
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author Goodman, Laura F.
Jensen, Guy W.
Galante, Joseph M.
Farmer, Diana L.
Taché, Stephanie
author_facet Goodman, Laura F.
Jensen, Guy W.
Galante, Joseph M.
Farmer, Diana L.
Taché, Stephanie
author_sort Goodman, Laura F.
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Over one million asylum seekers were registered in Germany in 2016, most from Syria and Afghanistan. The Refugee Convention guarantees access to healthcare, however delivery mechanisms remain heterogeneous. There is an urgent need for more data describing the health conditions of asylum seekers to guide best practices for healthcare delivery. In this study, we describe the state of health of asylum seekers presenting to a multi-specialty primary care refugee clinic. METHODS: Demographic and medical diagnosis data were extracted from the electronic medical records of patients seen at the ambulatory refugee clinic in Dresden, Germany between 15 September 2015 and 31 December 2016. Data were de-identified and analyzed using Stata version 14.0. RESULTS: Two-thousand-seven-hundred and fifty-three individual patients were seen in the clinic. Of these, 2232 (81.1%) were insured by the state indicating arrival within the last 3 months. The median age was 25, interquartile range 16–34. Only 786 (28.6%) were female, while 1967 (71.5%) were male. The most frequent diagnoses were respiratory (17.4%), followed by miscellaneous symptoms and otherwise not classified ailments (R series, 14.1%), infection (10.8%), musculoskeletal or connective tissue (9.3%), gastrointestinal (6.8%), injury (5.9%), and mental or behavioral (5.1%) categories. CONCLUSIONS: This study illustrates the diverse medical conditions that affect the asylum seeker population. Asylum seekers in our study group did not have a high burden of communicable diseases, however several warranted additional screening and treatment, including for tuberculosis and scabies. Respiratory illnesses were more common amongst newly arrived refugees. Trauma-related mental health disorders comprised half of mental health diagnoses. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s12875-018-0758-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
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spelling pubmed-59565522018-05-24 A cross-sectional investigation of the health needs of asylum seekers in a refugee clinic in Germany Goodman, Laura F. Jensen, Guy W. Galante, Joseph M. Farmer, Diana L. Taché, Stephanie BMC Fam Pract Research Article BACKGROUND: Over one million asylum seekers were registered in Germany in 2016, most from Syria and Afghanistan. The Refugee Convention guarantees access to healthcare, however delivery mechanisms remain heterogeneous. There is an urgent need for more data describing the health conditions of asylum seekers to guide best practices for healthcare delivery. In this study, we describe the state of health of asylum seekers presenting to a multi-specialty primary care refugee clinic. METHODS: Demographic and medical diagnosis data were extracted from the electronic medical records of patients seen at the ambulatory refugee clinic in Dresden, Germany between 15 September 2015 and 31 December 2016. Data were de-identified and analyzed using Stata version 14.0. RESULTS: Two-thousand-seven-hundred and fifty-three individual patients were seen in the clinic. Of these, 2232 (81.1%) were insured by the state indicating arrival within the last 3 months. The median age was 25, interquartile range 16–34. Only 786 (28.6%) were female, while 1967 (71.5%) were male. The most frequent diagnoses were respiratory (17.4%), followed by miscellaneous symptoms and otherwise not classified ailments (R series, 14.1%), infection (10.8%), musculoskeletal or connective tissue (9.3%), gastrointestinal (6.8%), injury (5.9%), and mental or behavioral (5.1%) categories. CONCLUSIONS: This study illustrates the diverse medical conditions that affect the asylum seeker population. Asylum seekers in our study group did not have a high burden of communicable diseases, however several warranted additional screening and treatment, including for tuberculosis and scabies. Respiratory illnesses were more common amongst newly arrived refugees. Trauma-related mental health disorders comprised half of mental health diagnoses. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s12875-018-0758-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. BioMed Central 2018-05-16 /pmc/articles/PMC5956552/ /pubmed/29769017 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12875-018-0758-x Text en © The Author(s). 2018 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
spellingShingle Research Article
Goodman, Laura F.
Jensen, Guy W.
Galante, Joseph M.
Farmer, Diana L.
Taché, Stephanie
A cross-sectional investigation of the health needs of asylum seekers in a refugee clinic in Germany
title A cross-sectional investigation of the health needs of asylum seekers in a refugee clinic in Germany
title_full A cross-sectional investigation of the health needs of asylum seekers in a refugee clinic in Germany
title_fullStr A cross-sectional investigation of the health needs of asylum seekers in a refugee clinic in Germany
title_full_unstemmed A cross-sectional investigation of the health needs of asylum seekers in a refugee clinic in Germany
title_short A cross-sectional investigation of the health needs of asylum seekers in a refugee clinic in Germany
title_sort cross-sectional investigation of the health needs of asylum seekers in a refugee clinic in germany
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5956552/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29769017
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12875-018-0758-x
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