Demographic and Clinical Characteristics of Refugee Children Utilizing Healthcare Services of Türkiye (2021-2022): A Single-Centre Study

Abstract

BACKGROUND: The number of refugees in the world has been increasing due to ongoing wars, political instability, violence, poverty and climate change. Türkiye has the world’s largest refugee population and half of the refugees are children. The aim of this study is to describe healthcare utilization patterns of the pediatric refugee population admitted to emergency, outpatient and inpatient services to enable hospitals to be better prepared to treat large numbers of refugee children. METHODS: This was a retrospective observational study using data from medical records of refugee children who had visited the _University of Health Sciences Sancaktepe Training and Research Hospital_, Istanbul, in pediatric emergency, outpatient and inpatient services between 1 June 2021 and 1 June 2022. RESULTS: 4383 refugee children including emergency (81.9%), outpatient (15.1%) and inpatient clinics (3%) were analyzed. The most frequently seen diseases for each service were upper respiratory infection and gastroenteritis in emergency; vitamin D deficiency and malnutrition in outpatient; lower respiratory infection, fever and intoxication in inpatient services. Most of the visits were non-urgent visits. COVID-19 disease was found in 1.3% of all children. CONCLUSION: Since the child refugee population has been less studied than the adult population, there is little data available on the health status of these pediatric refugees. This study demonstrates refugee children’s visits to the hospital, and especially the Emergency Department (ED), are increasing. Identifying the reasons for non-emergency ED use might provide additional insights and new approaches to serve the health care needs of this vulnerable population.