Infections and Injuries of Asylum Seeking Children in a Refugee Camp in Brussels in September 2015
2Research Group on Emergency and Disaster Medicine, Vrije Universiteit Brussel
3Medical Department, Operations Department,, Médecins du Monde / Doctors of the World Belgium
4Department of Public Health, Biostatistics and Medical Informatics Research Group, Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Background: In the summer of 2015, the exodus of Syrian war refugees and saturation of refugee camps in neighbouring countries led to the influx of many asylum-seekers in some European countries, including Belgium. This study aims to describe the demographic and clinical characteristics of the children among them.
Hypothesis is that among asylum-seeking children in a huddled refugee camp – even in a well-developed country with all medical facilities – respiratory, digestive and skin infections typical of any refugee camp, will emerge.
Methods: Using a descriptive cross-sectional study design, physicians of Médecins du Monde (MdM) prospectively registered age, gender, origin, complaints and diagnoses of all paediatric patients presenting to an erected Field Hospital in Brussels during September 2015. Diagnoses were post-hoc categorized according to the International Classification of Diseases (ICD10).
Results: Of 3907 patients who presented to the Field Hospital, 395 (10%) were children. Over 13% of patients suffered from injuries, but these were outnumbered by the proportion of patients with respiratory (39%), digestive (16%), skin (14%) diagnoses. More than 57% had features of acute infections at the time, and one in ten had to be referred for more advanced care. Logistic regression indicates that children over five years old suffered significantly more from injuries, and children originating from Iraq and Syria had more infectious diseases compared with all other countries. We neither detected other significant differences between the age groups, nor any pathology pattern changes over time.
Conclusions: Asylum seeking children arriving in a refugee camp in Brussels after a long and hazardous journey, suffer mostly from respiratory, digestive, and skin diseases. Still one of seven suffers from injury. These findings – consistent with other reports on children in displaced persons camps worldwide – should be anticipated when health care workers plan the medical management and follow-up for these children, even in a Western European country.
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