Cross-country variation in stillbirth and neonatal mortality in offspring of Turkish migrants in northern Europe

Abstract

This study suggests that preventable society-specific determinants are important for early-life mortality in Turkish migrants in Europe. An active integration policy is consistent with a favourable neonatal mortality outcome in continental Europe, but not with patterns in Scandinavia and the UK.

Morbidity, Self-Perceived Health and Mortality Among non-Western Immigrants and Their Descendants in Denmark in a Life Phase Perspective

“…Self-reported health among immigrant children seem also to be comparable to Swedish findings [55]. Within reproductive health, the findings in Denmark are supported in the European literature highlighting that in general immigrant women face more risk factors than native-born, including preterm birth, depression and still birth [38,56]. Similarly to European cancer mortality studies [50], our review showed a lower cancer-specific mortality among immigrants compared to ethnic Danes, but in contrast to other European studies which in general detected similar all-cause mortality rates between immigrants and native-born [57], our review found consistently lower mortality rates among adult immigrants compared to ethnic Danes.…”

“…Compared with children of Danish-born women, increased stillbirth and infant mortality was found among children of Turkish, Pakistani and Somali born mothers but no statistically significant differences among children of Lebanese and former Yugoslavian mothers (Table 4) [38,39]. * Based on the classification of an immigrant and a descendant defined by Statistics Denmark 2014 (see Table 2) ** The classification of Danish and non-Western immigrants followed that of Statistics Denmark (Statistics Denmark 2013) Adjusted for: a sex, b age, c family income, d mother's level of education, e cohabitation status, f body mass index (BMI), g alcoholic intake, physical activity, believing that you can take action on your own health, difficult to talk to parents or friends, bullying, experienced violence against oneself or the mother, academic performance and psychological symptoms, h smoking, i job senority, workplace, j weighted on age and sex J Immigrant Minority Health Table 4 Overview of included studies on the topic of mortality (N = 11)…”

The health of migrant children in Switzerland

“…Study characteristics are listed in Table 1. The main health topics covered in these papers were: obesity (Bürgi et al 2010;Ebenegger et al 2011;Lasserre et al 2007;Ledergerber and Steffen 2011;Stettler et al 2004), psychological health (five papers, four based on two cohorts) (Steinhausen and Metzke 2000;Corigliano et al 2007;Hüsler and Plancherel 2007;Hüsler and Werlen 2010;Steinhausen et al 2009), infectious diseases (Collet et al 2005;Heuberger et al 2003;Mutsch et al 2006), dental health (five articles based on three studies) (Menghini et al 2003a(Menghini et al , b, c, 2008a, adolescent abortions (Narring et al 2002), neonatology (Bollini and In 2006;Merten et al 2007;Villadsen et al 2010), neural tube defects (Poretti et al 2008), intensive care (Tritschler et al 2011), hospitalisation rates (Schoeni-Affolter et al 2008), maltreatment (Jud et al 2010), accidents (Natterer et al 2009Mayer et al 2006), and overall health of asylum-seeking children (Manzano and Suter 2002) and undocumented migrants (Depallens Villanueva et al 2010). Details on outcomes are presented in Tables 2, 3, 4.…”

“…Tritschler et al report high admission rates for children with foreign origin while outcomes once admitted were the same for Swiss and non-Swiss (Tritschler et al 2011). Infant mortality rates were twice as high in the African (Bollini and In 2006) and Turkish (Villadsen et al 2010) babies born in Switzerland as in the Swiss and neonatal mortality particularly increased in African (5.6/1,000), Turkish (4.8/1,000) and Italian (4.5/1,000), neonates compared to the Swiss (3.4/ 1,000), but adjustment for e.g., consanguinity which had been identified as contributing to a 4-5 times higher hereditary disease-related mortality in Turkish babies in Germany was not done (Bollini and In 2006). The risk of neural tube defects was judged to be increased in babies of migrant mothers who contributed to 39 % of cases, but results may have been affected by recruitment taking place in all paediatric but only obstetric units in four cities, and using the percentage of overall migrant population as a denominator thus not taking into account the higher birth rates (1.8 newborns/non-Swiss woman vs. 1.4 newborns/Swiss woman) in immigrants (Bundesamt für Statistik 2009) (Table 4).…”

Stillbirth incidence in Spain: A comparison of native and recent immigrant mothers

“…Contrarily, according to Luque-Fernández et al (2013), mothers residing in Spanish regions with high unemployment have a greater chance of delivering a stillborn baby. A meta-analysis by Villadsen et al (2010) on Turkish immigrants residing in nine European countries suggested that preventable societyspecific determinants are important for early-life mortality in Turkish migrants in Europe, and that an active integration policy is consistent with a favourable neonatal mortality outcome in continental Europe, but not with patterns in Scandinavia and the UK.…”