SELF-PERCEIVED HEALTH STATUS AND ILLNESSES AMONG INTERNALLY DISPLACED PEOPLE IN GEORGIA

Georgia had several waves of internally displaced people (IDPs) as a result of military conflicts on the territories of Abkhazia and Samachablo starting from 1990's with the latest large wave in 2008. Most of the IDPs live in compact settlements, such as old administrative buildings or specially constructed camps. In both cases, living conditions and social-economic status of IDPs are below Georgia's national average. There is extremely limited data on the health status of the IDPs in Georgia. Health Research Union (HRU) with support from ELRHA/R2HC program conducted a survey to study health service utilization and expenditures among IDPs, and measure the effect of targeted intervention versus untargeted, integrated approach to health financing. The aim of the current study was to analyze the self-reported health status among IDPs on the basis of the data collected through this survey. The survey was carried out among IDPs currently living in Georgia mainly residing in compact settlements. Sampling from the target population was performed by a multi-stage cluster sampling approach. In total 1.319 households with 4,359 household members were recruited and interviewed for the survey. Male accounted for almost 55% of all household members in the survey. Slightly less than half of respondents were married; children under the age of 15 constituted 23% of all IDPs surveyed. In total, 40% of all respondents (1729 persons) report being chronically ill and identify a wide range of conditions. Of them 532 report having 2 or more chronic diseases. About a third of occurrences (29%) of chronic diseases is attributed to cardiovascular diseases. Musculoskeletal and gastrointestinal diseases (each) constitute 13% of all occurrences of chronic diseases. During last 24 months 129 household members gave birth. The prevalence of chronic diseases among adult population increases as the age advances with the highest rate among those aged above 65 with 84% reporting having at least one chronic disease. Self-perceived overall health status was characterized as excellent, very good and good by 53%, as fair by 32% and as poor and very poor by 16% of the respondents. The conducted research was the first wide-scale study of the health status among internally displaced people in Georgia. These data may contribute to better understand the problems in this vulnerable population and evaluate impact of the implementation of the different models of the health care including targeted health insurance for IDPs.