Des citoyens aux racines africaines : un portrait des Belgo-Congolais, Belgo-Rwandais et Belgo-Burundais

Dans le prolongement de l’enquête sur les Belgo-Marocains et Belgo-Turcs publiée en 2015[1], cette étude vise à cerner le profil sociodémographique des Congolais, Burundais et Rwandais de Belgique. Avec quelque 110.000 personnes, les Belgo-Congolais, Belgo-Rwandais et Belgo-Burundais forment le 3ème groupe le plus important de populations issues de l’immigration hors Union européenne. Pourtant, en dépit d’une histoire partagée avec notre pays, ces citoyens sont peu présents dans le débat public et paraissent mal connus au sein de la société. Cette enquête combine une recherche quantitative sur base d’un échantillon de 800 afro-descendants dans les trois régions du pays et une analyse qualitative basée sur des entretiens. Elle permet ainsi, pour la toute première fois, de mieux comprendre leurs positionnement et attitudes dans la société belge, envers leur pays d’origine, mais aussi de rendre compte de leur dynamique d’intégration et des difficultés qui restent prégnantes

Hospital admissions and mortality for acute exacerbations of COPD during the COVID-19 pandemic: A nationwide study in France

Background: A global reduction in hospital admissions for acute exacerbations of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (AECOPD) was observed during the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Large-scale studies covering the entire pandemic period are lacking. We investigated hospitalizations for AECOPD and the associated in-hospital mortality at the national level in France during the first 2 years of the pandemic. Methods: We used the French National Hospital Database to analyse the time trends in (1) monthly incidences of hospitalizations for AECOPD, considering intensive care unit (ICU) admission and COVID-19 diagnoses, and (2) the related in-hospital mortality, from January 2016 to November 2021. Pandemic years were compared with the pre-pandemic years using Poisson regressions. Results: The database included 565,890 hospitalizations for AECOPD during the study period. The median age at admission was 74 years (interquartile range 65–83), and 37% of the stays concerned women. We found: (1) a dramatic and sustainable decline in hospitalizations for AECOPD over the pandemic period (from 8,899 to 6,032 monthly admissions, relative risk (RR) 0.65, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0.65–0.66), and (2) a concomitant increase in in-hospital mortality for AECOPD stays (from 6.2 to 7.6% per month, RR 1.24, 95% CI 1.21–1.27). The proportion of stays yielding ICU admission was similar in the pre-pandemic and pandemic years, 21.5 and 21.3%, respectively. In-hospital mortality increased to a greater extent for stays without ICU admission (RR 1.39, 95% CI 1.35–1.43) than for those with ICU admission (RR 1.09, 95% CI 1.05–1.13). Since January 2020, only 1.5% of stays were associated with a diagnosis of COVID-19, and their mortality rate was nearly three-times higher than those without COVID-19 (RR 2.66, 95% CI 2.41–2.93). Conclusion: The decline in admissions for AECOPD during the pandemic could be attributed to a decrease in the incidence of exacerbations for COPD patients and/or to a possible shift from hospital to community care. The rise in in-hospital mortality is partially explained by COVID-19, and could be related to restricted access to ICUs for some patients and/or to greater proportions of severe cases among the patients hospitalized during the pandemic