Clinical Profiles of 3907 Asylum Seekers in Brussels Refugee Camp

3907 patient records detail the medical conditions of asylum seekers presenting at a field hospital in Brussels in September 2015. Physicians prospectively registered demographic and clinical characteristics, with over 49% showing features of infection. The data was collected by Médecins du Monde and published under a CC0 license.

Use Cases

• Analyze the prevalence of respiratory, dental, skin, and digestive diagnoses across patient origin and age groups.
• Model the likelihood of injury diagnoses based on demographic characteristics like gender and origin.
• Investigate the correlation between patient origin and specific infection features noted during consultation.
• Examine the distribution of medical complaints categorized by the International Classification of Diseases (ICD).

Strengths

• Contains 3907 patient records from a defined refugee camp setting.
• Data includes specific clinical findings, with over 49% of patients showing features of infection.
• Prospectively collected by Médecins du Monde physicians using a standardized registration method.
• Diagnoses are categorized according to the International Classification of Diseases (ICD).

Limitations

• Data is from a single month (September 2015) and a single location, limiting temporal and geographic generalizability.
• Sample represents only asylum seekers who presented for medical care, not the entire arriving population.
• Clinical details are from a field hospital setting, which may differ from standard clinical documentation.

Provenance

Source

Dryad, authored by Gerlant van Berlaer.

Collection Method

Descriptive cross-sectional study; physicians prospectively registered patient data.

Time Range

September 2015.

Freshness

Last updated in 2020, representing a historical snapshot from 2015.

Geography

A refugee camp (field hospital) in Brussels, Belgium.