Health Needs of Refugee Children Younger Than 5 Years Arriving in New Zealand

Abstract

Screening identified health needs in otherwise asymptomatic newly arriving refugee children. A proportion of children required access to multiple specialized medical services and may benefit from a comprehensive pediatric service.

Clinical and laboratory evaluation of new immigrant and refugee children arriving in Greece

“…Nevertheless, it is worth mentioning that we were able to perform and subsequently confirm latent tuberculosis infection by QuantiFERON-TB test only in two out of our eight cases (2 children from Congo). The incidence of latent TB among our study participants is much lower than that reported in previous studies concerning migrant children performed in the United States, New Zealand or Australia with the lowest rate (15%) described among refugee children under 5 years of age arriving in New Zealand [9, 31–33]. It is evident that comparison of the above data may be misleading considering that the countries of origin of the migrants are dissimilar to ours and that these studies were conducted at earlier periods.…”

“…Oral health is a common area of unmet need among migrant children [23, 24]. Additional clinical problems, including skin, respiratory and surgical conditions have been described frequently by previous investigators, especially among newly arriving refugee children [9]. …”

“…Immigrants and refugees originating from regions with limited access to iron- rich foods and higher rates of infectious diseases are at risk for iron deficiency [10] and resulting anemia [34]. Despite the fact that low ferritin levels are commonly used as an indicator of iron deficiency, this alone may underestimate the problem since occasional underlying infections falsely increase ferritin values to normal [9]. …”

“…Among the population of migrant children, refugees represent a group of higher risk for the aforementioned health issues because of the nature of life-threatening experiences before and during flight from their home countries as well as the difficult circumstances of existence in exile [7, 9]. Although migrant children in general do not pose an imminent health threat to their host countries upon arrival, it is evident that a health assessment is important since the majority of the above conditions are treatable, and if undiagnosed, may result in serious adverse health consequences.…”

Exploring immunisation inequities among migrant and refugee children in New Zealand

“…11,12 Migrant and refugee children are noted to be particularly at risk of VPDs as many have incomplete or unknown immunisation status and few have serological immunity against some VPDs. 13,14 Arriving migrants may be under-immunised due to multiple factors, such as coming from resource poor countries with suboptimal immunisation coverage and facing interruptions of routine vaccinations while migrating. 11 Post-arrival, migrants may experience barriers with receiving immunisations attributed to socio-cultural differences, difficulties accessing health services, economic troubles, limited language proficiency and health literacy, and/or inadequate medical information and advice.…”