“Our patients are an eclectic profile. Some are traditionally dressed and come from rural parts of Syria. These include the Bedouin people, who often have facial tattooing and traditional dress. Many women wear the burka. Some people are clothed in typical modern-day European/American attire of jeans and t-shirt. These people are generally from the cities such as Homs, Damascus and Aleppo. Despite their aesthetic differences, they have something in common. They have all lost everything they owned. They have all witnessed horrendous tragedy and acts of violence. They are all mourning the deaths of loved ones. And what is worse, they are living in fear about the fate of loved ones who are unaccounted for, left behind in Syria.” - MSF doctor Aoife Doran in Tripoli.

Read more: http://blogs.msf.org/aoifed/2013/05/swing-of-things/

Photo © Aurelie Lachant/MSF

Photo:Ain el-Helweh in Saida is the largest camp hosting Palestinian refugees in Lebanon. Lebanon 2013 © Aurelie Lachant/MSF.

From Damascus to Ain el-Helweh: Palestinians in Syria Flee to Lebanon

“I’m deeply sad inside, but I need to appear strong in front of my family,” says a man called Mahmood while sitting in the narrow room he now shares with his wife and six-year-old son in the Ain el-Helweh Palestinian refugee camp in Saida, Lebanon. Until almost two months ago, he’d been living in another camp for Palestinians, this one in Damascus, but the conflict in Syria had made it impossible to stay.

“It’s very difficult,” he says. “Seven of my relatives were killed by the bombings and shootings in Syria. We saw their mutilated bodies. I buried them myself and buried my neighbors too. My son disappeared. One month later, my brother disappeared. I’m sure they got killed and this is causing me a lot of sadness.”

Photo: A transit camp near the Turkish border. Syria 2013 © Anna Surinyach/MSF

10,000 Syrians Seek Shelter Near Turkish Border

Several months ago, Hussein Alwawi was living in Aleppo with his family. But, he recalls, “A warplane attacked our neighborhood and lots of houses were destroyed, including ours. We were not at home at the time, but two families were killed.”

Five days later, he and his family set out towards Syria’s border with Turkey. They found an ad hoc settlement that now hosts some 10,000 displaced Syrians, more than double the number who’d been there at the beginning of the year. While it is officially known as a “transit camp,” it would be more accurate to call it a camp for internally displaced people, or IDPs.

Driven from their homes by the war, most of these IDPs now live in tents set up in a field formerly occupied by a customs office, though Alwawi and his family found sanctuary inside a mosque. In a quest to create some sense of normalcy, people have set up barbershops and foodstalls, even a school for the children.

Photo: MSF is providing humanitarian assistance to Syrian refugees in Domeez camp through general health and mental health care and immunization. Iraq 2013 © Pierre-Yves Bernard/MSF

Iraq: Syrian Refugees’ Health Deteriorates at Domeez Camp

Overcrowding and poor living conditions in Iraq’s Domeez camp have led to a recent deterioration in the health of Syrian refugees. Stéphane Reynier, emergency coordinator for MSF, describes the current situation in the camp:

The health system in Syria has collapsed, and the war has left a section of the population with no access to health care. For the past two years, because of the conflict, children have not received their routine vaccinations.

FREE EVENT | Live Webcast Crisis Update on Syria

Join us Thursday, May 9, for a LIVE ONLINE panel discussion featuring three distinct on-the-ground perspectives on the crisis in Syria and on MSF’s various operations.

Featuring:

Stephen Cornish, Executive Director, MSF-Canada, who recently returned from a fact-finding assignment that took him to a number of MSF programs in and around Syria.

Deane Marchbein, MD, President of the Board of MSF-USA and MSF Anesthesiologist, who spent a month earlier this spring providing surgical care within Syria.

Michael Goldfarb, Media Relations Manager, MSF-USA, who recently documented living conditions and the humanitarian situation facing Syrian refugees in Lebanon and northern Iraq.

Photo: Salwah Mekrsh was shot by a sniper in Aleppo. In this photo, taken in April 2013, she is about to start a mental health consultation with MSF staff in Kilis. Turkey 2013 © Anna Surinyach

“I feel better, but I can’t walk.”

Eighteen-year-old Salwah Mekrsh is unable to walk. Her mother and her sister push Salwah’s wheelchair through the streets of Kilis, a Turkish city near the border with Syria, then enter a small courtyard and stop under the shade of a lemon tree. While Salwah waits for her mental health consultation with MSF to begin, they talk about how their lives have changed.

“Before the war, we used to have everything,” says Salwah, “but since it started we have suffered too much.”

Salwah was pushed into marriage shortly before the first wave of protests in Syria, in March 2011, when she was 15. Soon she became pregnant; her daughter was born just as the country’s strife was becoming an all-out civil war. After her husband tried to assault her, their marriage disintegrated, and he left, taking the baby. “He took my daughter and doesn’t let me see her,” says Salwah. “I have no way to contact them. I haven’t seen my daughter for a year.”

Photo: A little girl waits against the gates of the camp registration center in Domeez. Iraq 2013 © Pierre-Yves Bernard/MSF

Providing Care in Syria and in Neighboring Countries: An Overview of MSF programs in and around Syria

The conflict in Syria remains extremely intense. Frontlines continue to shift. The medical system is in shambles. An estimated 6.8 million people are in urgent need of humanitarian aid, but whole enclaves are cut off from assistance of any kind.

Despite the very real challenges of operating in the country, MSF is now running four hospitals inside Syria and is increasing mobile clinic activities to the extent possible. Simultaneously, the organization is actively seeking to open new projects where it is safe to do so.

And, it should be noted, MSF is using only private donations for its work in Syria in order to remain entirely independent of all political positioning around the crisis.

MSF is also working in the neighboring countries of Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey, where some 1.4 million Syrians have fled in search of sanctuary. These countries have been overwhelmed by the influx of refugees and returnees, and the humanitarian response has thus far been unable to meet their needs.

Photo: A young refugee in Domeez camp, where more than 55,000 people have settled. Iraq 2013 © Pierre-Yves Bernard/MSF

Providing Psychological Care in Syria: “Flashbacks, Nightmares, and Baby Clothes”

People have lost their identity. Older men cannot find their place in society and in the family. They have lost their job or stopped being a fighter. Maybe they have responsibility for a family but they have had to move house several times in quick succession.

I don’t have to find them; they come and ask for help, saying things like, “I’m starting to be violent towards my wife and children. Please help me, I cannot be like that.”

Psychologist Audrey Magis recently returned home after spending two months working with Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in Syria, where she set up and ran a mental health program in one of MSF’s projects in the north of the country. Magis, who had previously worked for MSF in Gaza, Libya, and in a camp for Syrian refugees, explains how the war has affected people and what MSF is doing to help.

Photo: Midwife Cathy Janssens calms and assists a patient as she attempts to deliver her baby by natural means at the MSF hospital in Northern Syria. Syria 2013 © Nicole Tung

In Syria, A Midwife On Call

“Women often give birth at night and so after a full day-shift, usually a full night-shift would follow. I would spend most of the daytime doing consultations, frequently being called away to assist a delivery. There were two Syrian assistants to help me, but they had no medical training, let alone specific obstetric skills. I had to teach them so much from scratch, and I couldn’t leave them to do consultations or deliveries alone. So I had to be present at each and every consultation, and rush back and forth each time there was an alert that a woman was going into labor.

So, a heavy workload, and extremely tiring. But you find the energy from somewhere. The women were incredibly grateful. They would hold me in their arms, hug me, and thank me over and over.”

Belgian midwife Cathy Janssens on her MSF assignment in Syria.

Photo: A father and his daughter wait in MSF’s mobile clinic to see a doctor in Northern Syria. Syria 2013 © Nicole Tung

Syria: “Nobody Here Was Prepared for This”

Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) project manager Loïc Jaeger just spent two months in Syria in one of three covert hospitals that MSF manages there. Here he describes the humanitarian situation and MSF’s response.

Two years have passed since the beginning of the conflict in Syria. What is the current situation in the country?

The situation is dire; the needs are massive and the overall humanitarian response is extremely limited. In general, the few humanitarian actors that are working in the north of Syria are mostly focusing on surgery. But the health care needs are immense and far more extensive. Before the war Syrians were leading a normal life with a relatively high standard of living. In the region where we work, near the Turkish border, there are lots of lovely summer houses that used to be used for holidays by people living in the big cities. The children used to go to school, and water flowed from the taps … But for months now the electricity has stopped functioning, there is no running water, and people have been coping with the bitter cold winter with no heating. People have gone back to wood stoves; in every house you see a hole drilled into the wall to install a chimney.