Native-Language Medical Advice for Refugees

This update on our work starts with a simple but disturbing question:  Who is unworthy of assistance?   Perhaps more to the point, who is less worthy of assistance?  We ask the question because despite the better angels of our nature, all of us cannot help but harbor private feelings which influence our charitable actions.  Is a traumatized child in a camp in Turkey more needy than an undernourished baby in Africa?  Are child marriage girls in the Sudan less compelling than those sold into hawala slavery in Syria?  Seeing the world as it is in October 2016 it seems we are forced to choose between horrors. 

A natural human tendency is to gravitate toward more sunny situations, those in which a little help will seem to go a long way. They seem less of a black hole, less of a bottomless pit.  If $5 will feed a Libyan toddler for a week, their smiles are more rewarding than the tortured eyes of a child in a Serbian refugee camp; for whom nothing will ever seem normal again.

And so, as caring Americans, we seem to have a serious dilemma of choice.

On September 19^th and 20^th, IMCRA was invited to join scores of other NGOs in presenting their work at the United Nations Summit on Refugees and Migrants. In two days of sessions, with data presented from over 30 nations directly involved with refugee issues, it became clear that if there is anything that most deserves intense global mobilization and response it is the current refugee crisis.  Millions of people are on the move worldwide to escape a 21^st Century return to some of the worst criminal barbarity in recorded history.  As report after report was presented the look of shock on the faces of the representatives was universal.  Not a few tears were shed by people already hardened to the inhumanity of global affairs.  Seemingly endless reports of rape, slavery, child abuse, starvation, and brutal murder assailed us for those two days.  There were many reports, but precious little discussed in terms of direct remedies.

Unfortunately, the fact is that the people suffering these darkest horrors are also those who need the most attention and the most help from us.  IMCRA is one of the few organizations addressing the problem directly.  We are speaking to and aiding refugees and their caregivers in their own language and in full recognition of the terrible circumstances in which they find themselves.  We have engaged committed psychiatrists, physicians and nurses and are recruiting more on a weekly basis. While it may take longer to coax a smile from a 9-year old whose parents were murdered in Iraq, the reason to live we provide will ultimately be a much healthier one than the alternatives of crime, destitution and radicalism.  This is our goal and our mission, please do your best to help us.

Thank you.

Links:

• Overview of our work
• Global Overview of IMCRA's Work Worldwide

No matter how desperate the plight of the Syrian Refugees, there are many signs of an emerging reluctance to offer them heartfelt help.  This is evident in this country as well as elsewhere.  Humanitarian impulses are dampened by month after month of reports of some new terroist atrocity and mass murder.  Grisly and horrifying stories and photos have become all too common in our daily news.  Almost invariably an Arabic-sounding name is associated with the murderers.  In many cases the murderers are immigrants from the Mideast who have lived for years in the countries they have savaged.  Good people hesitate and begin to wonder;  "Why should I be supporting and giving aid to a population of potential terrorists?".  In this country and elsewhere irresponsible demagogues play these fears for votes and worsen the atmosphere of ignorant xenophobia.  The fact that the best studies have shown well over 99.97% of refugees are peaceful, decent people with no ties to terrorism does not register.

As is so often the case, a little knowledge and understanding goes a long way to exposing these fears as not only groundless but completely counterproductive. First and most importantly, violent people are made, not born; and a century of studies of the human condition have shown that misery and hopelessness in childhood is one of the primary factors in shaping a criminal adulthood.  Right now there are hundreds of thousands of children, living under hellish conditions of hunger, illness and deprivation.  In many cases, the countries they have sought refuge in, (e.g. Greece, Serbia, Jordan, Turkey...etc), have been unable to offer an effecctive reprieve from their hardships; and the squalor of the camps continues.  It is important to remember as well, that well before these children and their families were forced to flee their homes, conditions in Syria itself had deteriorated into an endless nightmare of violence.

The one thing these children and their parents can take faith in is the kindness and assistance of those who see them as innocent fellow humans of the the world community.  The best thing we can do to prevent the misery that leads to violence and mental illness is to embrace these people and their most desperate needs.  The worst thing we can do is isolate and fear them.  IMCRA's native language medical program takes this reality to heart.  Since earlier this year we have elicited the unbridled cooperation of Arabic-speaking physicians and healthcare experts throughout the US to provide needed interactive medical resources on therapeutic areas such as child psychology, nutrition, cardiovascular medicine, pulmonology, and emergency surgery, among others.   These interactive services are available via internet and smartphone.  Soon we will have an onsite presence from contributing faculty as well.  The reaources offered are targeted at overwhelmed and/or undertrained healthcare professionals onsite in the camps as well as at patients and families themselves.

The IMCRA program says clearly and comfortingly: "...we care and we are there for you...".   Thusfar we have launched 15 mdeical and psychiatric modules and are in the midst of producing 15 more.  Please help us to continue one of the few positive influences on the innocent and not-very-different-from-ourselves members this suffering community.   Thank you.

Links:

• IMCRA telemedicine
• Local news article on IMCRA efforts worldwide
• The Facts