SCABIES HAUNTS SYRIAN REFUGEES IN LEBANON

Beirut, 20 Dhul Hijja 1434/25 October 2013 (MINA) – The UN refugee agency, UNHCR on Friday claimed that scabies haunts thousands of Syrian refugees in Lebanon, especially the children. Now, they require serious treatment.

Seeing the dark and red spots all over their bodies, doctors told Alian al-Hamidi that his four children were all caught by scabies, a contagious disease that causes severe pain and itch.

Al-Hamidi, 60, hails from Syria’s northeastern province of Idlib, and is now seeking shelter with his family in Lebanon, Xinhua news agency reported as monitored by Mi’raj News Agency (MINA).

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He was not satisfied with the treatment given to his kids, saying the free ointment would not be enough to shoot the trouble. Despite the security risks, the treatment is better there, he said.

Another displaced, Salma Al-Oueissi, said her seven-year-old child still suffers from scabies “despite being treated for a month in one of the Bekaa dispensaries run by the UN Higher Council for Refugees (UNHCR).”

Statistics piled up by an aid agency show that among every 50, 000 Syrian refugees subjected to medical checkup, there are 4,000 pregnant women, among whom 850 are hit by scabies and 400 others by lice, a medical worker in a Lebanese village told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

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Abdel Hamid Al-Assafiri, displaced from Syria’s northern city of Aleppo, said the management of an official school in the West Bekaa’s Rachaya kicked out his three children out because they had scabies and lice.

The principal said “my children would not be accepted back before getting rid of this contagious disease,” said Assafiri.

An official with one of the international donors aid agencies said one of the methods to rise up to the threat of an outbreak of contagious diseases is through raising the awareness of the refugees by special lectures and seminars, along with providing the needed medicines to treat scabies and lice at all the dispensaries and hospitals.

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In the past two weeks, about 75,000 displaced Syrian children were vaccinated against smallpox and measles in the West Bekaa, while the campaign would eventually reach all the 800,000 Syrian refugees in Lebanon. (T/P04/E1)

Mi’raj News Agency (MINA)