Nilesh Vijaykumar

If you’re an immigrant in Denmark and suffer a cardiac arrest, you’ll be taken care of as well as any Dane. That said, I will pray for your long life!

Now, let’s delve into an intriguing study that reveals a captivating tale of healthcare equality in Denmark

For the study, the researchers compared how immigrants and non-immigrants fare in out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) cases. They examined over 37,000 OHCA cases from 2001-2019 from the Danish Cardiac Arrest Register.

Here’s what the researchers found:

• Immigrants and non-immigrants received healthcare of similar quality throughout the OHCA journey.
  
• Immigrants achieved a similar survival rate after cardiac arrest as the non-immigrants, further reinforcing the notion of healthcare equality in Denmark.

But here’s what I found to be the most striking finding of the study — the similarity in bystander CPR and defibrillation rates between immigrants and non-immigrants. This is an indication of two things:

1. People in Denmark do not hesitate to help those suffering from cardiac arrest regardless of their appearance.
   
2. Success of Denmark’s volunteer first responder programme called the TrygFonden Heartrunner (TrygFonden Hjerteløber) with 120,000 registered volunteers and extensive provision of publicly accessible automated external defibrillators.

These findings highlight the effectiveness of the Danish healthcare system in delivering equitable care to all individuals, regardless of their immigrant status. They also underscore the absence of disparities in the provision of life-saving interventions and training for the general population to undertake them. Here’s some perspective:

• In Denmark, 79% of all OHCAs receive bystander CPR, much higher than the average for Europe – 58% and 47% in the USA.
  
• A study titled Racial and Ethnic Differences in Bystander CPR for Witnessed Cardiac Arrest found that Black and Hispanic persons in the US were less likely to receive potentially lifesaving bystander CPR, regardless of the racial or ethnic makeup or income level of the neighbourhood where the cardiac arrest occurred.

Denmark’s example offers valuable insights into promoting healthcare equality. The researchers point out that free public healthcare for immigrants staying more than three months in Denmark probably plays a pivotal role in achieving such equality. Denmark’s low economic inequality could be another contributing factor.

Hungry for more details?

You can find them in the study titled ‘Outcomes after out-of-hospital cardiac arrest in immigrants vs natives in Denmark‘, published in the journal Resuscitation. The corresponding author hails from the Department of Cardiology at Copenhagen University Hospital. The research was a collaborative effort by a team of researchers from multiple esteemed institutions.

Ends//