A. Malamitsipuchner et al., PRETERM DELIVERY AND LOW-BIRTH-WEIGHT AMONG REFUGEES IN GREECE, Paediatric and perinatal epidemiology, 8(4), 1994, pp. 384-390
Recently Greece received a large number of refugees mainly from Easter
n European countries, Middle East, Africa and the Pontus region. Refug
ee status, implying psychosocial adversities and financial problems, h
as traditionally been associated with unfavourable pregnancy outcome.
This study aimed to compare the incidence of preterm delivery and low
birthweight among 638 refugees and 1231 indigenous women giving birth
at the same hospital in Athens. Conditional logistic regression was us
ed in the analysis to account for parity and delivery date (matching v
ariables) as well as controlling explicitly for maternal age and gende
r of the neonate. It was demonstrated that refugee status did not over
all influence the occurrence of preterm delivery or low birthweight, t
hus implying that these two variables are not sensitive or early indic
ators of the adverse effects of psychosocial stress suffered by refuge
es.