We have confirmed the dates for our November medical mission to Jordan: November 8 – 14, 2014. The first day of the mission is the 8th and will begin with a meeting at our hotel at 8am. The last day of work is the 14th and we will be done around 5pm.

Plan to arrive on the 7th (or earlier if you want to do some sightseeing or just get a bit more rest before the mission starts), and flights should be scheduled for departure late evening on the 14th or later – again if you want to stay longer, that is no problem, just let us know.

To register, call our office at 206-545-7307 or go to our medical mission page for Dates & Registration.

On August 23rd SCM is hosting a fundraiser for the Malki-SCM Children’s Center in Amman. Through an extremely generous donation last year we received the funds to open and operate the center for a year, but now it is time to start planning operations for the coming year.

Please join us for an evening of music and authentic Syrian food on the roof-top deck of our office, learn more about what the children’s center has accomplished already. We will also have a live auction with some really great items – more to come on those later!

If you are in the Seattle area, please consider joining us for this special evening. Tickets for the event are available online at Eventbrite for Dinner on the Deck. Tell friends and family in the area about the event too!

We have been able to make a difference in the lives of many Syrian children traumatized by the war in their home country. The center provides pediatric mental health care, a place to play and learn, and family support services. Please help us continue to help these children.

If you are unable to make it to the fundraiser, but want to help, please donate either through the Eventbrite event page – there is an option to just donate and not attend – or click on the Paypal donation button on the left and you can choose the Malki-SCM Children’s Center button, and then once you go to the Paypal page you can choose if you want to make a monthly donation or a one-time donation. Thank you!

 

When my friend first told me about the SCM medical mission to help the Syrian refugees in Jordan, I thought to myself that this is going to be an easy task, something I’m ready for after working in medical missions before, but after 3 missions I came to the conclusion that I couldn’t be more wrong!

Visiting camps for a whole week at a time, working with devastated people, kids, old ladies, young men who lost every hope in life, makes you rethink every single thing you knew about the Syrian revolution.

Being Palestinian, being a professional refugee gives you a different perspective about the refugee life, the stories I heard from my father about camps, all came back to life, this time with different characters, yet same agony.

To be honest, before these missions, I used to sympathies with the Syrian regime, thinking that it was under huge conspiracy driven by media, but living with Syrians for 3 weeks changed my whole perspective.

The stories I heard, the horrors those people came across, the agony, the blood, death and torture made me feel guilty about my opinions

I worked in the ophthalmic clinic, fitting patients for glasses, I came across horrible stories, unbelievable tales of war.

I once had an elderly lady in her late 70s, once she saw me she couldn’t hold her tears, she started crying loudly, apparently I reminded her of the son she lost in the war, among other four sons, she lost while running from Aleppo, she told me that parents should never outlive their sons, she told me that all she needed is to see clearly, so that she can read Quran for their souls in the afterlife, she had cataract, a condition we can’t treat with our limited resources, I never felt this helpless in my entire life.

In Al-Zaatri camp I had this patient, a young man limping; he came hoping to get his vision back, he told me his history, he was fleeing the country with his wife and two daughters, when a bomb went off beneath their feet, his wife and daughters died, he lost his foot, and sharpens hit his two eyes, he had severe corneal damage, needed a bilateral corneal transplant, something we couldn’t help with, he left the clinic in tears, I never felt this helpless in my life.

We visited Al-Malki Syrian kids center, a place that treats PTSD in children, we played with the kids, sang and danced, I couldn’t help but notice this little kid sitting in the corner by himself, I went to him, tried to talk him into joining the other children, not a single response, not a single word and no eye contact.

I was never good with kids so I called my fellow volunteers Hisham and Rami, who also tried to get him to play with us, again no response, after a while the attending psychiatrist, Dr Shafiq came along and took his hand to join the other children, he told us that he trust no one except for him, after he saw his own father murdered in front of his eyes, I never felt this helpless in my entire life.

No human being should ever be subjected to such horrors, these sort of things makes me rethink the humanity of the world we live in, how it is even possible that the headlines nowadays are about some celebrity doing some stupid stuff, or a team winning a stupid game, while those tormented souls suffer in silence.

We tried to help as much as we can, but still we all felt helpless against this terror, we treated about 3000 patients in those 3 weeks, still, there’s more than 2 million Syrians suffer with no help what so ever !

We will continue our trial to help, we will keep shouting for the human race to care, screaming for the world to gain his humanity back, hopefully some day someone will listen and end this madness.

Khaleel Kilo M.D

You can read this at Dr. Kilo’s blog here also: http://5rabeeesh.blogspot.com/2014/06/my-own-experience-with-syrian-refugees.html

June 19, 2014

This morning we set out for Alhamra, about 2 hours outside of Amman towards the Ramtha border crossing with Syria.  We were given a school to work in that had three stories, so we set up the pharmacy on the ground floor; the second floor was OBGYN, optometry, general medicine, and dental. The third floor was for humanitarian projects. We had games for kids, jump rope, balls, coloring, face painting, and then distribution of baby formula and diapers.

The funny thing is when the people got to the third floor it seems that they all had twins so they could get double of what we had! Finally, I asked one of the elders if there was something in the water, and I wanted to see the paperwork showing that they really did have twins. Well some did but others did not, of course.

The humanitarians started to paint the walls of the school inside in some beautiful colors. The crowd control was handled by our drivers.

We saw over 300 patients at this clinic and the cases we very hard and we had to do a lot of referrals: needed dialysis; heart stint was infected and had to be removed; badly infected shot gun wound; MS patient; pregnant 13 year old girl; numerous cases of scabies and other skin rashes; numerous cases of malnutrition; blood transfusion

The school was so dirty with garbage and trash inside.  We decided to get the kids to help clean so we gave them a present – each one grabbed a trash bag and got running to get the garbage picked up.  It was so much fun watching them, and other kids heard about it and started coming to us and said “I want to help!” The place looked so different by the time they finished.

It was a long, long day and we got out by 6pm and then went to the hotel for a debriefing.   Afterwards we had a nice dinner at Tawaheen Al-Hawa Restaurant.

On the most recent mission to Jordan, we found two camps that were not receiving any help from any of the aid organizations. They needed a fresh water supply as they had none, just what water they could carry in themselves by buckets or bottles. With Ramadan coming and the heat of the summer, the people are at an increased risk of dehydration.

SCM is raising money to provide clean drinking water and food for Ramadan to approximately 1000 families in these two camps and neighboring areas. We have already purchased 10 water tanks and have contracted with a reputable water company to fill the tanks weekly, but we need to get them more.

Here is a list of what we are planning to purchase and the costs:

• $150.00 USD will buy a 2.25 cubic meter water tank with the faucet, stand and installation – we have 10 but need 15 more for a total of 25 tanks  – total to be spent: $3750
• $800.00 USD will provide weekly water delivery service for the two camps per month – we will be applying to get water vouchers from the Jordanian government for the camps but this will take time, so we are planning on 3 months’ worth of water service – total to be spent: $2400

Any contribution will help provide clean drinking water to these 2 camps that are in dire need. Thank you for your help and compassion.

Last year we distributed food packages to over 500 families for Ramadan, and this year we plan to make it 1000. For $31 USD you can feed a family for a month! We have coordinated with a grocer in Amman who has a designated package of food that we will purchase and deliver to the families in norther Jordan.

The packages will contain rice, pasta, vegetable oil, cheese, frozen chickens, lentils and beans, tomato paste, sugar and tea.  Use the Paypal donation button to the left to help us reach as many families as possible.

Thank you!