A press conference held recently in Athens to present the first Greek language translation of the World Health Organization’s Psychological First Aid Guidelines underscores the importance of first responders’ ability to provide support for acute emotional issues as they receive refugees who have endured long, harrowing journeys to escape war at home and reach Europe. …
The children panic every time they hear an airplane or thunderclap. “They think they are going to be bombed,” says Hana, a mother of eight. “Two bombs fell over our house. My small daughter was hurt by shrapnel.” Like nearly five million others, Hana and her family lost everything to Syria’s brutal and unending civil …
With the support of P&G and other donors, International Medical Corps has been able to deliver health services and meet the immediate needs of refugees across three Greek islands. The $50,000 grant from P&G was combined with other resources to make two mobile medical units available and a 24-hour paramedic team available and purchase much-needed …
During the first weeks of 2016 alone, more than 82,000 people have made desperate, often dangerous, sea crossings to reach Europe’s shores.
Vaios Polichronidis usually starts his day at 5 am, hours before the first rays of sunlight emerge from behind the Turkish hills to the east across the Aegean Sea. He climbs into a nine-passenger van with his colleagues and heads towards the coast where he will spend the next eight hours or more receiving rafts …
It was just after 6 am when the first raft was spotted, a bobbing dot visible through the predawn gloom only by the florescent reflections of life jackets. The sun still had about an hour to rise and the waters that divide western Turkey from the Greek island of Lesvos were ink-black and calm. “A …
Eight months pregnant and traveling alone, Muna* boarded a small boat in Turkey that was to take her to an island in Greece she had never heard of before. The trip would be dangerous, she knew, but it would take her one step closer to her husband, who was already in Germany. “She told me …
When he arrived on the island of Leros, he hadn’t eaten or had any access to shelter or water for three days. The 23-year-old Syrian had a nasty cold. The joint International Medical Corps and Praksis medical team gave him cough syrup right away and some antihistamine tablets. And that along with a dose of …
Dr. Anna Sotiropoulou spots a couple with two little children and a tiny blanket-bundled infant slowly making their way to a detention center where refugees must spend their first night on the east Aegean island of Leros and get registered. She rushes over to check on them, as the mom, clutching her baby, looks as …
Refugees from crisis-affected countries arrive each day by the hundreds on the east Aegean island of Leros and are taken by Greek authorities to a detention center, where they must register and spend the night. The conditions are austere. They sleep outside on thin bed mats. Families cluster together to stay warm. Most appear thankful …