{"id":205896,"date":"2008-07-21T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-03-12T19:04:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/?p=205896"},"modified":"2019-03-12T19:04:14","modified_gmt":"2019-03-12T19:04:14","slug":"auto-insert-205896","status":"publish","type":"document","link":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/document\/auto-insert-205896\/","title":{"rendered":"Providing medical services for Palestinian refugees in Syria – Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵICEF press release"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Providing medical services for Palestinian refugees in Syria<\/strong><\/p><\/div>\n

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By Monica Awad<\/strong><\/p><\/div>\n

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JARAMANA, Syria, 21 July 2008 – Noujoud Moh’d is a Palestinian refugee residing in the Jaramana camp in Syria. Like the other 5,000 refugees living in the official camp – as well as the nearly 17,000 living outside in an unofficial camp – she and her family endure overcrowded housing, poverty and limited work opportunities.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Her husband is sick and unemployed, so Ms. Moh’d is forced to leave her five children early every day to work as a street seller to feed her family. “Our situation is very bad. I have to work on a daily basis in the crowded streets of Damascus to earn a few pounds,” she said with despair in her eyes.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Ms. Moh’d, who did not complete her schooling, relies on the assistance of United Nations Relief and Works Agency (Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵRWA) to provide food aid and cash assistance to meet her family’s basic needs. These services constitute a central resource for most families here, which they have no means of replacing. <\/p><\/div>\n

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She also relies on Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵRWA’s free medical care. While Palestinian refugees have free access to all governmental health facilities, 85 per cent still use the 23 health centres run by Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵRWA. <\/p><\/div>\n

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Genetic screening and education<\/strong><\/p><\/div>\n

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At the Jaramana clinic, Dr. Hassan Arab and his team educate mothers and caregivers on how to detect a sick child and when to seek medical care. The sessions include educational materials on the implications of consanguineous (inter-family) marriages, which are common in the camps. They also stress the importance of leaving adequate recovery time between pregnancies.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Consanguineous marriages cause increased rates of congenital blood disorders. “These diseases are hereditary and fatal within the first 20 years of life without extensive medical care,” said Dr. Hassan. <\/p><\/div>\n

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To help address the problem, Dr. Hassan has appointed a physician to provide genetic counselling and follow up on sickle cell and other cases of blood disorder. <\/p><\/div>\n

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Role of proper feeding
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The infant mortality rate is relatively low among Palestinian refugees in Syria. One in forty children under five among the Palestinian refugees is reportedly severely underweight. There is also a high prevalence of anaemia among children and pregnant women. <\/p><\/div>\n

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Low birth weight, congenital malformations and acute respiratory infections are the leading causes of infant deaths.<\/p><\/div>\n

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“Families are not aware that it is through proper feeding and not through medicine that we can solve this problem,” said Dr. Hassan.<\/p><\/div>\n

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Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵICEF provides support
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Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵICEF partners with Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵRWA and the General Authority for Palestinian Arab Refugees to provide the camps in Syria with the necessary vaccinations and cold-chain equipment to store and preserve supplies of vaccines.<\/p><\/div>\n

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In addition, Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵICEF has trained almost 140 health workers and provided physiotherapy equipment to four Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵRWA community rehabilitation centres, among other support. Basic health care and medical knowledge provided by Ä¢¹½ÊÓƵICEF helps improve the lives of mothers and children already struggling in a landscape of unemployment, poverty and overcrowding.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Providing medical services for Palestinian refugees in Syria By Monica Awad JARAMANA, Syria, 21 July 2008 – Noujoud Moh’d is a Palestinian refugee residing in the Jaramana camp in Syria. Like the other 5,000 refugees living in the official camp – as well as the nearly 17,000 living outside in an unofficial camp – she […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"country":[],"document-category":[1329],"document-source":[2105],"committee-meeting":[],"document-subject":[1945,2033,2533,2153,1745],"entity":[1729],"document-language":[6542],"class_list":["post-205896","document","type-document","status-publish","hentry","document-category-press-release","document-source-united-nations-childrens-fund-unicef","document-subject-assistance","document-subject-children","document-subject-health","document-subject-refugee-camps","document-subject-refugees-and-displaced-persons","entity-united-nations-system","document-language-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document\/205896","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/document"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document\/205896\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"country","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/country?post=205896"},{"taxonomy":"document-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document-category?post=205896"},{"taxonomy":"document-source","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document-source?post=205896"},{"taxonomy":"committee-meeting","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/committee-meeting?post=205896"},{"taxonomy":"document-subject","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document-subject?post=205896"},{"taxonomy":"entity","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/entity?post=205896"},{"taxonomy":"document-language","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.un.org\/unispal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/document-language?post=205896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}