Intestinal Parasite Burden and Pre-Departure Treatment Compliance in Kentucky Refugee Children: A Descriptive Study

Objective: Children are 1⁄2 of the world’s refugees and often have intestinal parasites. This study seeks to determine the intestinal burden and pre-departure treatment of Kentucky pediatric refugees. Methods: This is a chart review of Kentucky pediatric refugee health screening data from 20122017. Stool culture results from children arriving through refugee camps were compared to noncamp children. They were placed into 3 regional groups and analyzed based on CDC pre-departure treatment recommendations. Results: Of the 3,199 records, 1,653 had stool testing. 354 (51%) refugee camp children tested positive compared to 326 (33.9%) non-camp children. Giardia and Blastocystis were most commonly identified. Treatment aligned with CDC guidelines 64.7% of the time. CDC compliance was 83%, 79.8%, and 30.2% from Regions 1, 2, and 3 respectively. Discussion: Pre-departure treatment of pediatric refugees needs improved compliance with CDC recommendations through education of refugee camp workers. Giardia and Blastocystis are common and metronidazole is recommended for symptomatic children. DOI: 10.18297/rgh/vol2/iss1/5 Submitted Date: December 31, 2018 Accepted Date: March 15, 2019 https://ir.library.louisville.edu/rgh/vol2/iss1 Affiliations: 1University of Louisville, This original article is brought to you for free and open access by ThinkIR: The University of Louisville’s Institutional Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in The Journal of Refugee & Global Health by an authorized editor of ThinkIR. For more information, please contact thinkir@louisville.edu. Recommended Citation: Russell, Collin and Rominger, Annie H. (2019) ”Intestinal Parasite Burden and Pre-Departure Treatment Compliance in Kentucky Refugee Children: A Descriptive Study,” Journal of Refugee & Global Health: Vol. 2 : Iss. 1 , Article 5. *Correspondence To: Collin Russell Email: collin.russell@louisville.edu Original Research Copyright: © 2019 The author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. The objectives of this study were to characterize and compare the intestinal parasite infection profiles and pre-departure treatment of Kentucky pediatric refugees who arrived from traditional refugee camps with those who did not arrive through a refugee camp. The authors will also describe the compliance of pre-departure treatment to the CDC recommendations in this population.