According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), more than 13 million people inside Syria are in dire need of humanitarian assistance. The ever-growing needs, combined with the protracted nature of the Syrian conflict and refugee crisis, have led to significant gaps in funding for...
My six years of 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...
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...
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...
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,...
Dr. Salim Saiyed has travelled extensively with SAMS on various medical missions as a Family Medicine doctor. But the conditions he saw in Lebanon were by far the most dire he has encountered on a mission trip. “On the first day, we turned a refugee tent made of cardboard and...
Six years after the eruption of the conflict in Syria, Jordan’s Al-Zaatari Refugee Camp has become the largest Syrian camp in the region, with 80,000 residents. Over half of the camp’s population is under 24 years old, with 19.9% of the population being under five years old. Through our medical...
“If we were to create something called ‘human devastation syndrome’ that is what we’re seeing,” with these words, Dr. MK Hamza, Chair of SAMS Mental Health Committee, kicked off his discussion of mental health in Syria, at the SAMS’s 6th Annual National Conference in Los Angeles, CA on February 18th,...
Early in 2016, Tabarak Al-Jabawi lay waiting for surgery in Amman, Jordan. For five years, a malignant tumor on her wrist had grown in size. The tumor had followed her, from her hometown in Syria, to Al-Zaatari camp in Mafraq, Jordan. After years of pain and frustrating diagnoses, she was...
Dr. Khalid Kurtom and his neurosurgery team from University of Maryland Shore Regional Health joined SAMS for medical mission to Amman, Jordan from April 7 – 14. Dr. Kurtom’s team joined a group of over 70 other medical professionals providing high quality, culturally appropriate medical care to refugees and the local community, including...
The past couple of days have seen our mission ramp up its services on all fronts. Our physicians have spread all across Jordan, from Irbid in the North to Ma’an in the South, and from Azraq Camp in the East to Ajloun in the West. We have provided care for...
Day 1 SAMS Global Response: Arrival Arrived in Thessaloniki. SAMS Global Response is staying in a hotel just outside the city, near the government camps. I arrived too late to join any of the clinics, so instead helped out with the day to day admin. The medical and field...
Your donation will make a world of difference to those impacted by crisis struggling to access vital care.
DONATE