Cesarian deliveries among Syrian refugel and Turkish pregnant women: A retrospective cohort study

Abstract

The Syrian civil war began and led to a mass migration of Syrians. Almost for a decade, Syrian refugees have been welcomed by Turkey, one of the neighbouring countries of Syria, with support of the European Union. According to reports, in February 2022, officially 3,746,544 Syrian refugees were accomodated in Turkey [1]. The high number of Syrian refugees tend to move to Kocaeli, an industrial city close to Istanbul offering better job possibilities for immigrants. Unfortunately, migration leads not only to loss of housing and occupation, but also difficulty in obtaining health care. Previous studies showed that Syrian women who migrated to Kocaeli, Turkey, tend to bear children at earlier gestational and maternal ages, including adolescent mothers and their infants with lower birth weights [2,3]. All of these might be a result of difficulty in obtaining health care, malnutrition and language barriers.