You are here

Article Text

Article menu
Download PDFPDF
PostScript
Letter
Pregnant refugees during the first days of Russian invasion of Ukraine
  1. Stepan Feduniw1,
  2. Barbara Stawarz2,
  3. Grzegorz Raba3
  1. 1 Department of Reproductive Health, Centrum Medyczne Ksztalcenia Podyplomowego, Warszawa, Poland
  2. 2 Wojewódzki Szpital im Św Ojca Pio w Przemyślu, Przemyśl, Poland
  3. 3 Medical College, University of Rzeszów, Rzeszów, Poland
  1. Correspondence to Dr Stepan Feduniw, Department of Reproductive Health, Centrum Medyczne Ksztalcenia Podyplomowego, Warszawa 01-004, Poland; sfeduniw{at}cmkp.edu.pl

https://doi.org/10.1136/jech-2022-219704

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

    A high number of refugees are coming into the territory of the neighbouring countries because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Almost all of them are women and children. It is also not surprising that many of them are pregnant. Przemyśl is a Polish town near the Polish-Ukrainian border and is currently the essential evacuation route for people fleeing Ukraine. Between 24 February and 10 March 2022, a total of 712 244 people, including 653 882 women and children, crossed the border. Up to 7240 women required medical support, 286 were hospitalised and 74 were pregnant. The leading causes of hospitalisation were deliveries (n=7), bleeding in pregnancy (32), threatening preterm delivery (n=12), pregnancy hypertension spectrum (n=8) and others (n=15). The poor health of refugees, leaving their country in a rush, should be mentioned.1 The adverse influences of the war on pregnant women and the higher occurrence of pregnancy complications due to war stress were described in the Gaza battlefield.2 Also, similar risks (bleeding in pregnancy, deliveries, postpartum haemorrhage) were identified in the Syrian refugees.3 With Ukraine on the edge of a humanitarian catastrophe, many people and medical systems of other countries are in danger, too, as a large influx of refugees with a poor health state might be beyond their logistical and financial capacity.

    References

    1. ↵
      2. Ludvigsson JF ,
      3. Loboda A
      . Systematic review of health and disease in Ukrainian children highlights poor child health and challenges for those treating refugees. Acta Paediatr 2022;111:1341–53.doi:10.1111/apa.16370 pmid:http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35466444
      OpenUrlPubMed
    2. ↵
      2. Punamäki R-L ,
      3. Diab SY ,
      4. Isosävi S , et al
      . Maternal pre- and postnatal mental health and infant development in war conditions: the Gaza infant study. Psychol Trauma 2018;10:144–53.doi:10.1037/tra0000275 pmid:http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28406660
      OpenUrlCrossRefPubMed
    3. ↵
      2. Bouchghoul H ,
      3. Hornez E ,
      4. Duval-Arnould X , et al
      . Humanitarian obstetric care for refugees of the Syrian war. The first 6 months of experience of Gynécologie sans Frontières in Zaatari refugee cAMP (Jordan). Acta Obstet Gynecol Scand 2015;94:755–9.doi:10.1111/aogs.12638 pmid:http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25817053
      OpenUrlPubMed

    Footnotes

    • Twitter @GRABA

    • Contributors Conceptualisation: SF and GR. Methodology: BS. Formal analysis: SF and BS. Investigation: BS and GR. Resources: BS. Writing—original draft preparation: SF and BS. Writing—review and editing: GR. Supervision: GR. Project administration: BS.

    • Funding The authors have not declared a specific grant for this research from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; internally peer reviewed.