My six years providing care for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) could not have prepared me for the complexity and gravity of the psychosocial wellbeing in refugee settlements in Lebanon. I recently joined the Syrian American Medical Society as a mental health volunteer on a medical mission to the Beka’a Valley...
Using her crutches, Tamam moves quietly and measures her steps to reach SAMS makeshift clinics inside a settlement in the Bekaa Valley, where SAMS medical mission volunteers are providing treatment and medications for some of the many Syrian refugees residing in the area. Tamam, 63, fled to Lebanon six years...
Dr. Adeeb Alshahrour, a Syrian American doctor, specializing in obstetric care, recently led SAMS OBGYN mission in February 2018. This was the third such mission to Lebanon, the first being in 2016. By the end of the mission, we had provided 58 surgeries and 613 consultations, as well as other public...
Anita Jensen is a midwife from Norway who joined SAMS on the recent OBGYN medical mission to Lebanon to provide care and services for pregnant, displaced Syrian women. She spent five days with SAMS mission in Lebanon, visiting settlements and rural areas to consult with women, provide them with advice,...
Five years ago, Khaled El Ali’s home in Syria was destroyed by a bomb. He moved from place to place with his wife, finally relocating to small settlement in the Bekaa Valley, Lebanon. There, Khaled lives alongside 20 families who fled from different regions in Syria, searching for refuge and...
Her neighbors call her “Oum Malek.” Oum Malek, 45, fled from Aleppo at the beginning of the Syrian crisis. She now lives with her husband and two kids in the Saadnayel Valley, in one of Lebanon’s many informal settlements. For many years, Oum Malek has suffered from an obstetric disease....
Hind El Hamade, 37, is a Syrian woman who lives in a small settlement in the Bekaa Valley area with her five children. Hind lost her husband in Syria, and was forced to leave her parents there when she fled. She struggles as a single mother, responsible for her family,...
Since August, 646,000 Rohingya refugees have fled from Myanmar to neighboring Bangladesh. According to the latest Doctors Without Borders report, at least 6,700 Rohingyas died, mostly due to violence in a brutal military crackdown, between August 25 and September 24. This deeply troubling number includes at least 730 children under...
I spent last week volunteering as an interpreter with the Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS) on their November mission to provide health care for Syrian refugees in Jordan. Seven years on, and the suffering of Syrian refugees still continues, yet I was constantly left in awe by their amazing resilience....
Mohammed started working with SAMS as a psychologist in the Bekaa Valley three years ago. Originally from the countryside of Damascus, he studied psychology and started working immediately after graduation. Not long after, he was forced to flee from Syria to Lebanon when the war reached his hometown. With the...
Leila* chose a career in psychosocial support for a simple, but powerful reason – “to help people” she says, sitting in a small office tucked away in SAMS’s multi-specialty clinic in the Bekaa Valley. Before she left her hometown in the rural Damascus, she worked in special education, providing care...
“I have a lot of family who are affected by the conflict. I know how much they struggle, and how poor their mental health and emotional well-being is.” Alia Salam recently started working with the Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS) in Lebanon, as the Psychosocial Support Project Director. For Alia,...
