On new frontiers

A Mobile Health Unit In Sijria

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On "Neuj Frontiers

CONSIDER the disinherited of the earth, homeless refugees benumbed by
poverty, famine and pestilence, pioneering on farm lands in the Near East.
With empty hands and broken health, they are trying to found new homes for
their children in Greece, Syria and Bulgaria. In their remote and lonely
colonies, babies are born bereft of their birthright and there is small hope for
youth. Through emergency war relief, the American people came to know
and understand refugee background and suffering. Through Near East
Foundation, the opportunity is here to vitalize that knowledge with practical
assistance during these crucial years of rehabilitation. Mobile Health Units,
equipped and maintained by friends in America are working in isolated new
settlements, among sick and discouraged families, to help them combat disease,
grim foe to the success of their hopes.

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lioul Health tL

ere Is Uo Future

Refucjee UiLLac|e

11

DISEASE, most of it preventable, causes appalling
loss of life in the Near East. Malaria, tuber-
culosis and diseases resulting from intestinal parasites,
are uncontrolled. Trachoma, with its threat of
blindness, is a menace to everyone. Scant crops
bring poverty, malnutrition and lowered vitality.
Ignorance of child care results in a high infant mor-
tality. In one area, 720 babies out of every thou-
sand died in their first year.

The death rate from tuberculosis in Greece is twelve
times that in the United States. Malaria is virulent
in refugee camps and villages. It is not uncommon
for an entire village to be incapacitated by the fever
while crops rot in the fields.

Hospitals and doctors are concentrated in coastal
cities. The interior is almost entirely without medi-
cal service and rural peoples know nothing of disease
carriers or of the simplest laws of health. Homes
are incredibly dirty, dark and unventilated. Drink-
ing water often is polluted. The sick are not iso-
lated. Children are neglected.

Inspired by the Foundation's Health Nurse, this swamp has
been drained and crops now grow there.

les

In Refucjee Uillacje

Such conditions, typical of backward native villages, are intensified in refugee centers where disease
too often reaches epidemic proportions. The situation in Syria can be duplicated wherever
refugees are located.

About 100,000 Armenians exiled from Turkey, who found refuge in Syria, have been living for
ten years in great camps in Aleppo, Alexandretta and Beirut, in squalor beyond words. Now,
from funds contributed in America, England and France, refugee families are being aided to leave
the overcrowded camps. They are allotted a small plot of land, some building materials and
supplies to last until the first harvest. With this inducement, many refugees have gone to north-
ern Syria, where they form communities of 50 to 150 families to engage in farming.

Joy fills their hearts at the thought of a real home again and the chance to plan better things for
their children. But years of camp existence have ill equipped them for the hazards and demands

of rural pioneering. Their iso-

Refuc|ee Camja

HEALTH PROJl

Albania: Malaria Prevention ar

Greece: Tuberculosis Preventioi
(Athens) . .
Village health and bet

Syria: Mobile Unit for refugee ,

$3,000 will buy and et

$1,000 provides an Ameri

$25 provides a native nursi

$5 buys a case of cor\densed miife
12 drvdAren fo;

lated settlements, among impover-
ished Arab fellaheen (peasants)
have little contact with organized
civilization.

Refugee homes are huts of sun-
baked mud, closely huddled to
save the cost of extra walls and
roofs. They are too poor to
buy window glass and so sunlight
and fresh air are barred. A hole in the roof often is the only
ventilation. Their only fuel is dung which they form into
cakes and plaster upon the walls to dry. There is no proper
sanitation. Few villages have an adequate water supply.
Children have no schools. The neglected soil needs several
years of cultivation before it can produce adequate food.
Stomachs are empty, resistance is low.

Js on Healt

Procjress Dcjaends on Health

Their first high hopes are dashed by the onslaught of disease.
Parents watch helplessly as their children sicken and die. Even
the strongest adults succumb to malaria. They can't work.
Everything falls to neglect. A village soon becomes demoral-
ized. People who have lived through the nightmare of de-
portation and camp life, are crushed beneath this added dis-
couragement. They drift back to the city refugee camps,
broken in spirit. This is a gloomy picture of what has happened in some villages. It need not happen. Syria offers
the exiles their one chance for a home. But Syria has no governmental program of health and education and the refugees
are too poor to provide their own. Our aid is encouraging the new colonists to hold to their purpose.

If the new farm colonies fail, the refugees must
return to slum city camps such as this.

Ttlol

Lrs an les

.1

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Health Units UJork In Remote Uillac|es .

WITH the regularity of a commuter's train, Near
East Foundation's Mobile Health Unit is mak-
ing the rounds of new refugee farm villages in northern
Syria, caring for the sick and working among the vil-
lage people, refugee and Arab alike, to help them
control the diseases which afflict them.

An American public health nurse, Annie Earle
Slack, is director of the Health Team. Miss Slack
studied under Mme. Curie and has had nursing ex-
perience in many lands. With disease prevention
her goal, she is developing a health program that
reaches into every corner of the people's lives and uses
every native resource for village betterment. The
team includes a local graduate doctor from Beirut
University, a local practical nurse and a chauffeur-
assistant. Each member is assigned specific duties in
the village health program.

They crowd our clinics. Like mothers everywhere
refugee women want their children to be well.

these

rLe HeallKmoLiL

iCTS FOR 193X

\d Village Health . ,
1 in a refugee camp

terment in Macedonia]
and native villages

$6,000

9,000
6,600

7,450

luip one healthmobile,

can nurse for six months.

i-assistdnt for one month.

(48 cans) — extra feedings for
r one month.

An American ambulance, known as the Healthmo-
bile, transports the Health Team from village to
village. It also serves as a clinic along lonely roadsides and in settlements where there is no room
clean enough for clinic uses. The Healthmobile carries a supply of milk and cod-liver oil which
is saving many children's lives. It brings the posters and pictures which are used to illustrate
health talks. When necessary, it conveys a patient to the Aleppo hospital, five hour's drive away.

When the Healthmobile reaches a village on its schedule, all who are not needed in the fields, are
waiting to welcome it. In some colonies, the people have put up a native hut as Health Center
and headquarters for the nurse. At the center, or in lieu of that, beside the Healthmobile, a clinic
immediately gets under way. Nurse and doctor diagnose and treat an average of a thousand cases
a month. Children, with few exceptions need trachoma treatments and almost everyone requires
quinine to counteract malaria.

In iKe Homes

Miss Slack visits each home, win-
ning interest in better child care,
home-making, pre-natal care and
other modern aids to disease pre-
vention. Her presence is the
occasion for a general scrubbing
up and her campaign for cleanliness
has earned her the title of "Miss
Water Soap." The children are
the chief objects of her attention.
Unkempt hair is cut away from sore eyes and a thorough bath-
ing supervised. She organizes playfor the youngest and games
and handcraft groups for the older ones, teaching in this fashion,
lessons of personal hygiene' and good habits. Supplementary
feeding is supplied for the undernourished and a record is kept
of the conditions of all the children under the nurse's care.

Roai

cisicie cl

e Clinic

Ui

e Improuemenl

C|e im|)

Each evening, after the men return from the farms, there is a
meeting of the adults to discuss village improvement projects.
In one village the men were encouraged to drain the local swamp,
performing the necessary labor after a hard day's toil. As a
result, the village has more acreage for cultivation and malaria
has practically disappeared. In another community suffering
from lack of water, Miss Slack brought in an expert from Aleppo
to advise the people how they themselves can solve the problem.

Under her leadership, each Health Center has become a center of village progress and a demonstration in cleanliness.

In all villages served by the Health Unit, better ways of living slowly are supplanting insanitary habits and despair has
been replaced by a new spirit of hope.

Nurse Slack and the local doctor diagnose and treat
an average of a thousand cases a month.

Do I|ou Know

rial

Disease, next to war, is the greatest enemy of Near Eastern peoples.

The Health Program of Near East Foundation is Their Ally Against Disease.

Malnutrition and ignorance are primary causes of disease.

The Foundation is Providing Medical Care and Health Instruction.
Rural peoples are remote from doctors and have no medicines.

The Foundation Brings Them Medical Care and a Community Health Program.

In refugee villages and camps, people are undernourished, broken in morale and a special prey to disease.
The Foundation is Working Where the Need is Greatest Through Clinics, Supple-
mentary Feeding, Health Instruction, Home Visiting.
Prevention of disease is more to be desired than curing disease.

The Foundation Enables jo Pre-Tuberculous Children to Resist Infection for the
Cost of Caring for One Tuberculous Patient in a Sanitarium for One Year.

ill Hou Rel

lUill \\on Help Us FiqKl Disease ?

MAKE CHECKS PAYABLE TO

MEAR EAST FOUHDATlOn

Cleveland E. Dodge, President Edwin M. Bulkley, Treasurer

James L. Barton, Vice-President Barclay Acheson, Secretary

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Let Us Help To Free The Children From The TSurden Oj Disease