In northeast Syria, everyday-masks are expensive and rare goods. Together with local seamstresses, we have produced and distributed over 8000 masks to prevent the spread of coronavirus.
Today, on International Volunteer Day, we only want to say two words: THANK YOU! A huge thank you to all our Volunteers at CADUS. It is only together that we can sustain this organisation, and you play an important part in shaping CADUS and giving it a face.
For almost four weeks we have been daily treating the inhabitants of the camp Kara Tepe 2 on Lesvos. Through medical access, we gain an insight into life in the camp. Many clinical pictures repeat themselves again and again. They are probably directly related to the current living conditions there, and range from frequent back problems, due to sleeping on the tent floor, to serious psychological problems.
Two members of our crew, who've been in the camp Kara Tepe 2 talk about the time they spent there. Rebekka (doctor) and Lamin (paramedic) give an account of what it's like to do medical work in a refugee camp. They talk about what frustrated them the most and the new impressions they gained.
After a long wait and several failed attempts, it's happening: CADUS is going to Lesvos. In cooperation with the Arbeiter-Samariter-Bund (ASB), we have responded to an official request and are sending a medical team to Kara Tepe 2 (also called Moria 2) to provide humanitarian aid. A small crew from CADUS is already on-site, preparing the mission.
Despite the obvious emergency on the island of Lesvos and official requests for support, the Greek government is delaying rapid assistance from independent organizations.
When the pandemic really started, we at CADUS were faced with a situation that was unusual for our circumstances: a crisis right on our doorstep, for which there were hardly any recommendations for action in the world of humanitarian aid that we could have based on. Through our Crisis Response Makerspace we were connected to exactly the people who are needed in such a situation.
One year ago, together with our local partners from the Kurdish Red Crescent, we opened the field hospital in Al Hol, a refugee camp in northeastern Syria. We are looking back at an eventful year for us, our employees and our partners.
Part of the essential public relations work of an organization that depends on donations is to report regularly on its own work. Nevertheless, we report comparatively little about our work in Northeast Syria. What are the reasons for our hesitation, which sometimes leads to smoking heads in our PR department?
For the last two years, our clinic in Raqqa was a little but successful project which never got the attention it deserved. It started without much noise and ended the same way.
At the CADUS Crisis Response Makerspace, where normally sawdust flies and welders flash, since two days there are many boxes and cartons with plastic head bands and foils. These parts are parts of face shields that are distributed from here to medical facilities with respective needs since 10th of April.
The financing of our hospital has been secured for the time being and we are continuing to train medical staff e.g. in terms of dealing with the treatment of burns, which we can treat as the only hospital in the camp.
While the humanitarian situation in Northeast Syria is still tense and the threat to the health system and people from the so-called corona virus has increased, the work for aid organizations has again been made more difficult.
Since the end of December, until a few weeks ago largely uncommented by European media, over a million people in Syria have been on the run again. Fleeing from Russian air strikes, heavy artillery strikes on densely populated areas, from the ground forces of the Syrian army. Idlib is approaching what can only be cynically described as the end of the nine-year war in Syria. An end in the form of millions of sufferings, blind destruction, looting and humiliation. In short: an end in the form of Assad's rule.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and are not necessarily the official position of CADUS e.V.
We say goodbye to the past year 2019 and thus the fifth year of our existence.We review 2019 and look ahead to 2020. So up into the sixth year of CADUS!
