Doctors Worldwide healing wounds of refugees everywhere


Regardless of religious, language, ethnic and sectarian differences, Doctors Worldwide is healing vulnerable people in the middle of the Syrian-Iraq crisis. Today, volunteer physicians continue to provide food and health services to people in 40 countries. Doctors Worldwide increased their health service activities among refugees due to the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) threat in Iraq, the immigration flow from Kobani and Shengal to Turkey and the ongoing Syrian conflict, which is in its fifth year. Last year in September, Doctors Worldwide began to offer health services in Şanlıurfa's Suruç district with a group of physicians and pharmacists. Until March, the initiative provided health services to 8,000 Syrians from Kobani at the Suruç Regional Primary Boarding School and also provided free examinations to over 20,000 people at the school's camp. The refugees also received drug treatment. With its mobile health service for refugees living in rural areas, Doctors Worldwide continues to offer free health services. The initiative will also employ permanent psychologists there. Kerem Kınık, the president of Doctors Worldwide said that Yezidis taking shelter in Turkey due to the crisis in Iraq's Shengal region are being offered primary health care services at a camp in Şırnak's mining areas since November 2014. Kınık said that health services have begun in Diyarbakır's Fidanlık and Batman's Beşiri camps in May this year and 7,000 Yazidis benefitted from the services. To relieve the suffering of Syrians, brought about by terror and war, $12 million worth of drugs were sent to the emergency zones in Syria. "Doctors Worldwide offers services not only to Yezidis, but also the regions with high Turkmen, Arab and Kurdish populations in Syria and Iraq," he said. Astringent kits were provided to thousands of people who might have died due to hemorrhage. Additionally, 20,000 first aid kits and millions of water cleaning kits along with thousands of milk powder packages were sent to the area.