Alaa is a 14-year-old Syrian refugee who lives in a small village in the Bekaa Valley. When Alaa’s family came to Lebanon eight years ago, she was only six years old. Before fleeing the war, Alaa stopped going to school for a full year. Like so many other children, it wasn’t safe for her to …
In the scramble to contain a deadly Ebola outbreak spreading across Liberia and two neighboring West African counties with frightening speed in the late summer of 2014, an International Medical Corps emergency response team deployed quickly to confront the epidemic at its source. As our team raced to complete a hospital-like treatment center in central …
Unpredictable rainfall patterns across Somalia often result in drought and floods, leaving the population without access to safe drinking water. A quarter-century of war and conflict has left Somalia’s pre-war water infrastructure and once-expansive irrigation and canal systems in disrepair. With only two perennial rivers, Somalia’s agricultural riverine communities are increasingly affected by extremes of …
Women’s economic empowerment is an indispensable component in the fight for gender equality. Sitting at the restaurant she runs, Rebecca Nyangot Biel—a 39-year-old mother of six from Nyal in South Sudan—is a striking example of why. Her unwavering spirit is inspiring, but it wasn’t always like this. She might be a business owner today, but …
In higher-income countries, one doesn’t hear the term “midwife” very often. It can evoke images of a bygone era, before intricate health systems with complex technology became accessible for many. But in other parts of the world, midwives can still make the difference between mothers and newborn babies thriving—or dying. Every year, an estimated 300,000 …
When Cyclone Idai cut its swath of destruction across Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi on March 14 and 15, International Medical Corps responded to support survivors in areas where the storm’s torrential rains, high winds and flooding had claimed more than 1,000 lives and affected nearly 3 million people. In Mozambique and Zimbabwe, the damage has …
My trip to Jordan with International Medical Corps gave me an opportunity to see a side of the Syrian refugee crisis that I did not expect: happiness. Whether it emanated from the faces of children at the Makani Centers in Amman or Irbid, or the new mom in Azraq camp who treasured feeling safe with …
To commemorate International Women’s Day on March 8, International Medical Corps held awareness events in Mogadishu, as well as the Jowhar, Galkayo South, Abduwaq and Baidoa districts of Somalia, where our teams engaged community members to address some of the challenges faced by women and to help identify possible solutions. Issues discussed across the five …
The conflict in Yemen has left its people—who faced extreme poverty long before the war—in what can only be described as a state of desperation. The level of suffering is unprecedented: a higher percentage of people face death, hunger and disease than in any other country in the world. Albeit fleeting, a beacon of hope …
Imagine having to wait all day to defecate in the dark, just to get the tiniest semblance of privacy—and then getting raped because you went outside alone at night. Imagine carrying a 10-gallon jerry can of water on your head and walking three miles in the blistering heat to bring it home for your domestic …