Disease Status of Afghan Refugees and Migrants in Pakistan

Frontiers in Public Health

article

Muhammad Suleman Malik¹  Muhammad Afzal²  Alveena Farid³  Fati Ullah Khan¹  Bushra Mirza¹  Mohammad Tahir Waheed¹ 

[1] Department of Biochemistry, Faculty of Biological Sciences, Quaid-i-Azam University;Department of Animal Science, Faculty of Biological Sciences, Quaid-i-Azam University;Ayub Teaching Hospital

关键词: Afghan refugees;    internally displaced people;    Pakistan;    disease status;    healthcare;    disease-related mortality;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpubh.2019.00185

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

World is facing the largest refugee crisis of its time due to continuously outgoing wars, conflicts and natural disasters. One of the important aspects of refugees and migrants is health. Till date, no comprehensive data was available related to health status of Afghan refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Pakistan. Here, we present health status for Afghan refugees for last seven years and for IDPs for 2–4 years. For Afghan refugees the data was provided by Commissionerate Afghan Refugee (CAR), Pakistan, whereas data for IDPs was collected from hospitals and Basic health units (BHUs) of different districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa namely Peshawar, Dera Ismail Khan and Bannu. Highest number of Afghan refugee's deaths occurred due to cardiovascular problems. Most prevalent reported infections were respiratory tract infections (48.05%). Skin diseases and Diarrhea collectively affected 21.08% of Afghan refugees. Overall, disease burden was more in females than males in Afghan refugee's population. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first comprehensive report on health and disease status of Afghan refugees and IDPs in Pakistan.

【 授权许可】

CC BY