Syrian refugees hit by influenza

Health-care workers immunizing newcomers at clinics, shelters

Syrian refugees newly arrived in Edmonton have another challenge to surmount — influenza.

Catholic Social Services says most of the children and many of the adults in the settlement agency’s temporary housing are coughing and sniffling their way through viral infections.

“For newcomers to this area to be ill is not new for us,” CSS spokesman Michael Di Massa said Thursday.

Of 254 government-sponsored refugees that have arrived in Edmonton to date, 134 are living in close quarters with other families in short-term housing. They’re falling ill once they arrive, rather than arriving sick, Di Massa said.

Some have gone to emergency rooms or urgent care centres, said Dr. Chris Sikora, medical officer of health for the Edmonton zone of Alberta Health Services.

Arabic-speaking family doctors and nurses have since stepped in to help, seeing patients in their offices and making house calls to sick refugees.

“This is an extraordinarily vulnerable group being new to Canada and coming from an environment that’s not very good. And I think, as Canadians, we’ve committed to caring for and providing them excellent service,” Sikora said.

The newcomers may be more susceptible to influenza and other infections because they’re unlikely to have received flu shots, and may have had insufficient nutrition and other health problems when they fled Syria’s civil war, Sikora said.

Health-care workers are now attempting to immunize newcomers with flu shots at clinics and in short-term housing, he said.

As health-care workers would expect at this time of year, influenza, colds, and gastrointestinal viruses are all circulating in Edmonton among the general population — not just Syrian refugees, Sikora said.

As many as 3,000 refugees are expected in the city by the end of February as the federal government committed to taking in 25,000 people who have fled Syria.

As of Wednesday, 521 refugees who took government airlifts from the Middle East have settled in the Edmonton area, according to a federal government website. More have arrived on commercial flights.

Five Albertans who died this fall and winter had lab-confirmed cases of influenza, according to Alberta Health Services.