Primary health needs of newly arrived African refugees

This report is the result of a project undertaken by a scholar of the Master of Applied Epidemiology program from The Australian National University during field placement in the Communicable Disease Control Unit of the Department of Human Services, in conjunction with the Department of Medicine at the Royal Melbourne Hospital. 

The report describes the main health problems of newly arrived African refugees who attended primary health care services in Melbourne during the first six months of 2005 and the barriers to delivering comprehensive health care to new arrivals as experienced by general practitioners. An epidemiological examination of the results of the laboratory tests performed by the general practitioners participating in the study was also conducted.

The refugee study population included people born in Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, Egypt, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Burundi and Rwanda, and the report describes testing results for the following diseases:

• Malaria
• Tuberculosis
• Vitamin D deficiency
• Vitamin A deficiency
• Anaemia and iron deficiency
• Gastrointestinal parasites
• Hepatitis B
• Hepatitis C
• Sexually transmitted infections
  

Primary health needs of newly arrived African refugees (726kb, pdf)

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