Health status of immigrants arrived to Italian coast [Stato di salute degli immigrati approdati sulle coste italiane ]

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: To analyze the factors involved in access to Emergency Department (ED) of undocumented immigrants in Lampedusa according to the country of origin. DESIGN: This is a retrospective observational study, carried out on newly arrived undocumented immigrants transferred to ED. SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS: Data were collected from medical records of Lampedusa ED between January 2012 and May 2013 on 326 undocumented immigrants. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: The outcomes evaluated are demographics characteristics and health condition of undocumented immigrants. RESULTS: In multivariate analysis associated factors to ED visits are: other pathologies rather than traumatic diseases (OR 0.22; p <0.001), younger age (OR 0.9; p <0.001) and female sex (OR 12.49; p=0.017) for Somalis; gastroenterological diseases (OR 2.55; p=0.026) and older age (OR 1.6; p=0.004) for Eritrean; neurological disease (OR 5.33; p=0.048) and male sex (OR 5.45; p=0.032) for Tunisian. CONCLUSION: This analysis shows that undocumented immigrants cannot be considered as a single population, because they generate a diversified set of pathological conditions.