We know that not everybody praying for and helping the relief work is following our Facebook page, which is where we post most of our ongoing updates. So, we wanted to summarize the medical needs from November for the Syrian refugees coming for help. Just in the past few weeks we have had the following cases coming to us with the following needs:

– A woman in active labor from a poor family that fled from Raqqa. Her husband couldn’t afford the hospital so dropped her off at his in-laws house and left… the in laws knew us and are also poor so kept calling for help. Thankfully the Lord slowed the labor for a day and provided last minute funds to get her to the hospital before it was too late.

– We also had another woman go into labor and need an emergency c-section after the baby became in distress. She is one of the roughly 40 women on our waiting list for pregnancy help, but couldn’t wait for a sponsor to come along to help (there was no sponsor) and we had to admit her anyway.

– A boy with a broken arm that had not healed in 4 months because they couldn’t afford the hospital, so they left his arm without a cast until 10 days ago someone came to their house and made a crude – almost worthless – cast. The bone is definitely not set to heal still.

– A young woman who fled from ISIS two weeks ago from the far east of Syria who has a strange abdominal swelling and pain that is debilitating. Her stomach is noticeably distended and we don’t what it could be. Possibly worms or fluid backup from another problem such as kidneys or liver.

– A little girl with failure to thrive that has a complex lung infection we have not been able to get rid of after months of increasingly stronger antibiotics. She’s about 5 years old and looks like she’s only 3 years. Thankfully she was negative for tuberculosis but has an obvious infection in her lungs after X-rays. We are currently searching for a pulmonologist that can help.

– A little girl with severe Thallassemia needing a blood transfusion as her hemoglobin got dangerously low. Afterwards she needs rather expensive medicines too to improve her condition so she can wait for a bone marrow transplant from the St Jude’s branch out here. We are hopeful they will cover the transplant but it’s not certain, and they definitely can’t help with pre-treatment.

– We had a woman needing chemo who was dying of cancer earlier this year and abandoned by her husband to die. She takes chemo three times a month, and would have died earlier this spring had we not been able to take her case on. She is slowly improving. She is only in her early 30s.

– A young woman who has lost 6 babies already and is on her 7th pregnancy and in need of daily medicine to sustain the pregnancy or she will lose this one too.

– A woman who lost her baby a this month but it was still inside her and she’s about to possibly go septic from infection and pain. Thankfully we were able to help her get to the hospital before the infection set in.

– A four month old that somehow has their left leg broken (femur) and was in great pain. No clear idea how the break happened, mother said it was the older sister dropping the baby. Likely the baby is malnourished thus susceptible to breaks. It seems the family is too poor to afford baby formula, and the mother cannot breastfeed due to medical issues, thus they likely give the baby apple juice to placate her instead of milk, so her bones are brittle. This is not uncommon with refugee children. We had a milk program but had to suspend it two months ago as we are waiting for provision in that area.

– A woman with severe hypothyroidism and diabetes who presented with a blood sugar of 411. She got insulin injections and a few days of thyroid medicine.

– A woman who got bit twice by a rat on her hand. Ouch!

– A young woman with seizures who hasn’t been able to buy her medicine for about a month. We were able to get her about a month of medicine thankfully.

– Another young woman recently married who is going blind and needs some kind of cataract surgery. Her husband is a poor building maintenance guy but they at least have a small room to live in at the building he watches.

– A man with metal rods who needed them x-rayed for possible removal and who also has broken screws in his bones. Thankfully we were able to get the x-rays and a doctor visit, his bones have not healed yet so the metal has to stay despite it being rather painful at times.

– A pregnant woman and her husband pleading to be put back on the program for pregnant refugees. We had to drop them last week due to lack of funding and their economic situation being better than the others though they are still not “rich” by any means

– About a dozen or more kids with rashes, fevers, strep throat, lung infections or obvious ear infections.

– And another dozen-plus older people with hypertension, diabetes, and other ailments of old age who aren’t able to get medicine otherwise to stabilize their health, and come regularly throughout the month.

– Various other cases of severe back pain and miscellaneous headaches; many women here are chronically malnourished and dehydrated, thus are in a general state of physical misery.

You can help directly here via our site or contact us directly if you are interested in knowing more about these cases.