The Health Status of Russian-speaking Immigrants in Germany

Abstract

Introduction: Germany developed today into a country of immigration, which creates an additional burden for the social security system and results in a new challenge for the healthcare. In the last 17 years more than two million “Russia Germans” have been repatriated and about two hundred thousand Jewish refugees have resettled in Germany from the former Soviet Union. Nevertheless relevant data concerning migration-related public health care are very scare.

Methods: Search of PubMed and Journals extracts combined with the own researches, analysing the health status indices of the Russian-speaking immigrants in Germany.

Results: Both repatriates of German origin and Jewish refugees demonstrated higher prevalence of impaired lipid metabolism in comparison with native population. 42 % of the 503,040 HBsAg (hepatitis B s-Antigen) carriers in Germany were migrants. The Jewish refugees demonstrated the highest rates of depression and anxiety and the highest levels of awakening cortisol. On the other side German resettlers showed lower cardiovascular as well as all-cause death rates compared to the native Germans.

Conclusion: The development of adequate health care programmes to address migratory aspects as well as the establishment of quality standards will realistically enhance the capability of responding rapidly to migrant health aspects and help to tackle inequalities in health.

Key words

Russian-speaking immigrants - German resettlers - Jewisch refugees - health care - lipid metabolism - mental health

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