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STORY: UNFPA / SYRIA LEBANON DISPLACED
TRT: 02:53
SOURCE: UNFPA
RESTRICTIONS: PLEASE CREDIT UNFPA ON SCREEN
LANGUAGE: NATS
DATELINE: 03 OCT 2024, JDEIDET YABOUS SITE, RURAL DAMASCUS, SYRIA
1. Various shots, displaced people arrive at the border
2. Various shots, UNFPA and partner mobile medical team works with arriving displaced people
3. Med shot, staff gives a woman medicine
4. Wide shot, health staff exams a woman on a mobile medical bed
5. Med shot, staff measures a child's mid-upper arm circumference
6. Med shot, staff measures a woman’s blood pressure
7. Wide shot, staff measures a woman’s blood pressure
8. Wide shot, mobile medical unit
9. Various shots, mobile medical team exams arriving people and disturbs essential medicines and supplies
10. Various shots, displaced people arrive at the border
Since 27 September, the escalation of hostilities in Lebanon has forced around one million people to flee their homes to seek safety. Many have sought refuge in hundreds of government-run collective shelters in Lebanon, while close to 250,000 people have crossed into Syria – most of them Syrian returnees.
For many it’s an impossible choice, stay in Lebanon where shelter and basic services are limited or return to a war-torn country they fled many years before.
More than half of the new arrivals in Syria are women and children, and an estimated 3,400 women are pregnant, forced to undertake an arduous journey, and grapple with the anxiety of where to find shelter and where to give birth safely. Around 380 women are expected to give birth in the next month.
Khawla was one of these women. Pregnant with her fourth child, she was forced to flee Mount Lebanon with her three small children in tow. They crossed the border into Syria last week. Her contractions started while she was en route - when she crossed the border she realized she was in labour. She was assisted to give birth safely by a mobile medical team operated by the Syrian Family Planning Association, a UNFPA (United Nations sexual and reproductive health agency) partner providing essential services at the newly-established government border health centre. The mobile medical team is one of 26 such teams UNFPA is supporting at border crossings in the three governorates of Rural Damascus, Homs and Tartous, ensuring reproductive health and protection services are still available to displaced women and girls, including referrals to specialized services such as emergency obstetric care.
Many women have made long journeys to Syria on foot, and it has taken its toll. Medical personnel at UNFPA-supported mobile teams have reported and treated a high number of upper respiratory and urinary tract infections among women and girls, and prescribed micronutrients to close to 40 pregnant women at risk of malnutrition.
The influx of people adds another layer of complexity to an already strained humanitarian crisis in Syria. With an economy shattered by years of war, humanitarian needs are at their highest since conflict broke out in 2011. Around 16.7 million people need humanitarian assistance and 13 million Syrians face acute food insecurity. The country’s health system is in tatters - nearly half of health facilities in the country are partially or completely damaged, and those that remain open are struggling with chronic shortages of medical equipment, medicines, and staff. Despite unprecedented needs, donor support has dwindled and this year’s humanitarian appeal is only a quarter funded.
UNFPA is focusing on meeting women and girls’ immediate needs at border crossings; while bolstering reproductive health and protection services at health facilities in Lattakia, Hama, and Aleppo, where large numbers of people have recently arrived. UNFPA has already delivered four mobile clinics to the Ministry of Health to provide urgent health care in Rural Damascus and Homs governorates, as part of its ongoing support to strengthen health care.
