Health condition of Afghan refugees residing in Iran in comparison to Germany: a systematic review of empirical studies

BACKGROUND: The re-emerging dominance of the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2021 caused a new wave of Afghan refugees heading Iran and neighboring countries. Iran in the Middle East and Germany in Europe are two major host countries to the largest populations of Afghan refugees. In both countries, severa...

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Autores principales: Rahimitabar, Parisa, Kraemer, Alexander, Bozorgmehr, Kayvan, Ebrahimi, Fatemeh, Takian, Amirhossein
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9862781/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36681845
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12939-023-01832-7
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author Rahimitabar, Parisa
Kraemer, Alexander
Bozorgmehr, Kayvan
Ebrahimi, Fatemeh
Takian, Amirhossein
author_facet Rahimitabar, Parisa
Kraemer, Alexander
Bozorgmehr, Kayvan
Ebrahimi, Fatemeh
Takian, Amirhossein
author_sort Rahimitabar, Parisa
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: The re-emerging dominance of the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2021 caused a new wave of Afghan refugees heading Iran and neighboring countries. Iran in the Middle East and Germany in Europe are two major host countries to the largest populations of Afghan refugees. In both countries, several studies have been done to assess the health condition of refugees. OBJECTIVES: To systematically review the existing literature to identify similarities and differences of health conditions of Afghan refugees living in the two countries, and to synthesize evidence on the health status and health care access of these populations. METHODS: Related electronic databases and grey literature of Iran and Germany on the health of Afghan refugees were scanned and searched up for the period 2000–2020. Key terms were formed by combining “Afghan refugees or immigrants or populations or asylum seekers”, “Physical or mental health”, “Healthcare service or access or use”, “Iran or Germany”. Empirical studies were considered if they contained samples of Afghan refugees with particular outcomes for Afghans. Results were categorized for both countries in the three main areas of physical health, mental health, and access/use of healthcare services. RESULTS: Nine hundred twenty-two documents were extracted, of which 75 full-texts were finally reviewed. 60 documents belonged to the health condition of Afghan refugees residing in Iran including 43 in physical health, 6 in mental health, 8 in healthcare access and use, and 3 in multiple aspects of health, and 15 belonged to Germany including 7 in physical health, 4 in mental health, 2 in healthcare access and use, and 2 in multiple aspects of health. A less explicit evaluation of the overall health condition of Afghan refugees was observable, particularly for Germany. While matches on the study subject exist for both countries, in comparison to Germany, we extracted more quantitative and qualitative health studies on Afghan refugees of the mentioned areas from Iran. German health studies were rare, less qualitative, and more on the health condition of diverse refugee groups in general. CONCLUSIONS: Wide gaps and unanswered questions related to mental health and overall health status of the Afghan refugee population are observable, especially in Germany. Our systematic review identified the gap in evidence, which we would recommend to bridge using a wider lens to comprehensively assess the overall condition of refugees considering associations between health and socio-economic and cultural determinants instead of a one-dimensional approach. Further, within health studies on refugee populations, we recommend stratification of results by the country of origin to capture the within-group diversity among refugees with different countries of origin.
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spelling pubmed-98627812023-01-22 Health condition of Afghan refugees residing in Iran in comparison to Germany: a systematic review of empirical studies Rahimitabar, Parisa Kraemer, Alexander Bozorgmehr, Kayvan Ebrahimi, Fatemeh Takian, Amirhossein Int J Equity Health Systematic Review BACKGROUND: The re-emerging dominance of the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2021 caused a new wave of Afghan refugees heading Iran and neighboring countries. Iran in the Middle East and Germany in Europe are two major host countries to the largest populations of Afghan refugees. In both countries, several studies have been done to assess the health condition of refugees. OBJECTIVES: To systematically review the existing literature to identify similarities and differences of health conditions of Afghan refugees living in the two countries, and to synthesize evidence on the health status and health care access of these populations. METHODS: Related electronic databases and grey literature of Iran and Germany on the health of Afghan refugees were scanned and searched up for the period 2000–2020. Key terms were formed by combining “Afghan refugees or immigrants or populations or asylum seekers”, “Physical or mental health”, “Healthcare service or access or use”, “Iran or Germany”. Empirical studies were considered if they contained samples of Afghan refugees with particular outcomes for Afghans. Results were categorized for both countries in the three main areas of physical health, mental health, and access/use of healthcare services. RESULTS: Nine hundred twenty-two documents were extracted, of which 75 full-texts were finally reviewed. 60 documents belonged to the health condition of Afghan refugees residing in Iran including 43 in physical health, 6 in mental health, 8 in healthcare access and use, and 3 in multiple aspects of health, and 15 belonged to Germany including 7 in physical health, 4 in mental health, 2 in healthcare access and use, and 2 in multiple aspects of health. A less explicit evaluation of the overall health condition of Afghan refugees was observable, particularly for Germany. While matches on the study subject exist for both countries, in comparison to Germany, we extracted more quantitative and qualitative health studies on Afghan refugees of the mentioned areas from Iran. German health studies were rare, less qualitative, and more on the health condition of diverse refugee groups in general. CONCLUSIONS: Wide gaps and unanswered questions related to mental health and overall health status of the Afghan refugee population are observable, especially in Germany. Our systematic review identified the gap in evidence, which we would recommend to bridge using a wider lens to comprehensively assess the overall condition of refugees considering associations between health and socio-economic and cultural determinants instead of a one-dimensional approach. Further, within health studies on refugee populations, we recommend stratification of results by the country of origin to capture the within-group diversity among refugees with different countries of origin. BioMed Central 2023-01-21 /pmc/articles/PMC9862781/ /pubmed/36681845 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12939-023-01832-7 Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Systematic Review
Rahimitabar, Parisa
Kraemer, Alexander
Bozorgmehr, Kayvan
Ebrahimi, Fatemeh
Takian, Amirhossein
Health condition of Afghan refugees residing in Iran in comparison to Germany: a systematic review of empirical studies
title Health condition of Afghan refugees residing in Iran in comparison to Germany: a systematic review of empirical studies
title_full Health condition of Afghan refugees residing in Iran in comparison to Germany: a systematic review of empirical studies
title_fullStr Health condition of Afghan refugees residing in Iran in comparison to Germany: a systematic review of empirical studies
title_full_unstemmed Health condition of Afghan refugees residing in Iran in comparison to Germany: a systematic review of empirical studies
title_short Health condition of Afghan refugees residing in Iran in comparison to Germany: a systematic review of empirical studies
title_sort health condition of afghan refugees residing in iran in comparison to germany: a systematic review of empirical studies
topic Systematic Review
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9862781/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36681845
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12939-023-01832-7
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