Charity
experience A humbling
Scottish GDP Dr Ammar Al Hourani describes his experiences caring for Syrian dental patients housed in a Turkish refugee camp
I
n 2008, I spent two months of my elective year in Hama helping Syrian chil- dren who had little or no dental services. And, since
qualifying as a dentist four years ago, I have always had the desire to go back to Syria. Sadly, I never envisaged that
I would go back so soon and in such altered circumstances to help some of the same Syrian children, this time in refugee camps in Turkey. Two years of devastating
conflict has, at the time of writing, claimed the lives of more than 70,000 people, inter- nally displaced five million people and made one million people seek refuge in Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq. My father and I felt that we in the Scottish community should try to extend a helping hand to those in desperate need. We decided to leave the
comforts of our homes and jobs in Scotland and organised a trip funded by us and contributions from Scottish-based charity Aid4All. We researched our trip and began a Scotland-wide fundraising scheme to pay for the humanitarian, dental and medical mission in the camps. The charity had previously
organised four successful aid missions to Lebanon, Damascus and Homs, helping to feed hundreds of families by distributing food parcels and providing funds for basic
26 Scottish Dental magazine
medical aid for children. From November 20ı2, we
began collecting any surplus dental equipment and mate- rials from the local general dental practices in Forth Valley, as well as obtaining much- needed sponsorship from various dental companies, including GSK, Dentsply and Colgate, who kindly offered gloves, masks, visors, Fuji GI, composite, dental hand pieces and instruments, surgical equipment and needles/ syringes. We learnt from Aid4All that
there was an overwhelming shortage of medically and dentally qualified personnel at the camps, which have seen rising numbers of injured crossing the borders from Syria. The camps’ medical and dental services were already basic and under-equipped, but now they are overstretched. On occasions, simple and complex treatment, both medical and dental, was being performed by under-qualified staff. In January of this year, my
father and I, after months of planning and co-ordinating with several charities on the ground in Turkey, flew to Hatay, where we began our dental and medical aid mission. We were transported with all our equipment to Rehanli, a town situated only a few miles away from the Syrian camps. This was a sleepy, picturesque
town which, since the conflict, has become home to 45,000 Syrians from Aleppo, Idlib and surrounding towns and villages. The next morning we drove
to the Syrian refugee camp. From a distance, the camp in Atma looked beautiful, tents clustered together in a dash of white on a brown hill with green rows of olive trees on either side as far as the eye could see. Close up, however, the campsite was disorganised with tents crammed so tightly together that there was very little room to even walk. The temperature was close
to freezing and the travelling was made harder by the muddy conditions as a result of the previous night’s rain. My first impression of the camp was that there was a real sense of bewilderment. There was clearly no local authority or any aid agency in charge of running this camp; no co-ordination whatsoever, which naturally lead to confusion; and, to an extent, a lack of security. The overcrowding was
unbearable, with tents some- times shared by more than one family. The conditions were very basic with rudimen- tary sanitation and very little running water. I marvelled at
the resilience of the human spirit. How people can cope in such a situation, adapt to this new environment and re-establish some semblance of their lives in an area and conditions unfamiliar to them was quite remarkable. What struck me was the
sheer numbers of children in the camps; this is a camp that is home to roughly ı2,000 people, with as many as 50 per cent of them being children. These were children who have witnessed the harsh conditions of war, the tough conditions of the refugee camps and without any meaningful educa- tion for two years. This is not to forget the meagre winter clothing most had on. It was heartbreaking to witness, but, unfortunately, this was the reality that we faced. That same day I was
expected to volunteer at the dental clinic, which was set up and sponsored by a large group of Syrian diaspora in Germany. The dental clinic was based within a polyclinic which also had a paediatric drop-in centre, a geriatric clinic and pharmacy. The dental appointments
were based on a first-come, first-served basis and people would arrive early to register. The queue for dental registra- tion was massive, highlighting the need for dental care in the camp. That is when it hit me
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