[Children from ethnic minorities in hospital in Aarhus. Why there--how long--because of what?].

We analysed the proportion of hospitalization, duration of hospitalization and diagnoses for children from ethnic minorities (both parents did not come from Nordic countries, EU, North America, New Zealand or Australia) compared to other ("western") children in a follow-up study. The study included all 47,987 children < 15 years in the municipality of Aarhus. All hospitalizations during March and April 1996 were recorded. The proportion of children from ethnic minorities who were hospitalized was 0.012, the corresponding proportion being 0.007 for the other children, showing a hospitalization-proportion-rate of 1.7 for the ethnic minorities. The median hospitalization time was two days and independent of ethnic group. In the group of ethnic minorities there were more children with psychological problems and with thalassaemia, and there were language problems in a third of the hospitalizations. The study showed a need for special health promotion activities for children from ethnic minorities.