Baladi - Coverage
Lying in a hospital bed in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, 14-year-old Abdel Razzaq forces himself to sip a glass of sweet, amber-coloured tea. The fluids help his emaciated body through what seems like an endless three-hour dialysis session.
“I get tired, I throw up,” said the young refugee from Aleppo in Syria, whose body relies on the thrice-weekly treatments to continue functioning. “I am dizzy and my blood pressure goes down sometimes.”
Abdel Razzaq suffers from kidney failure, a condition he was born with. For most of his 14 years, he has been kept alive with medication. But since fleeing Syria with his parents seven years ago, his condition has worsened. The arduous dialysis sessions at a local hospital in north Bekaa have kept him going, but now he risks losing his only life-saving treatment.
Each dialysis session in Lebanon costs around US$100 – an impossible amount for Abdel Razzaq’s family to cover three times a week. His father Mohamed is not able to work himself due to another acute medical condition.
“My wife works in cleaning and farming to feed the kids,” explained Mohamed, “But that is not enough.” The Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS) has been funding Abdel Razzaq’s treatment since 2017, but the NGO is facing funding cuts this year.
The prospect of losing the financial support they rely on for Abdel Razzaq’s treatment is his mother Halime’s worst nightmare. “I think about him day and night,” she said tearfully. “What can I do to help him? I can’t do much. I can’t go back to Syria at this moment to treat him, it’s too dangerous.”
Currently, there are 218 Syrian refugees in need of dialysis in Lebanon. Since February 2017, a small number of NGOs including SAMS – in coordination with UNHCR – have covered the treatment costs for some of those in need of assistance.
Sources: UNHCR