PQMD Members Respond to the Syrian Refugee Crisis
A ravaging civil war has created an unstable climate in Syria. Since 2011, almost 700,000 people have left, seeking asylum in European countries. A majority of the 700,000 Syrians have fled in 2015 – leaving several EU states under stress from the overwhelming number of refugees arriving. Millions more of these migrants, however, are still in transit through Syria’s neighboring countries like Lebanon, Jordan, and Iraq, which are also struggling to provide adequate living conditions for the surge of human arrivals.
PQMD members have been addressing this crisis for years and are now scaling up their engagement in humanitarian aid to provide a multifaceted and sustained response to the situation. To assist displaced refugees in foreign countries, considerable cash donations to multiple NGOs have already been sent from Sanofi US, Abbott, Abbvie, Astra-Zeneca, and GlaxoSmithKline, among others
Refugees struggle with bottlenecking along the Serbian border with Croatia. Increased border supervision and security has made a more strenuous and treacherous journey for many Syrians. (source: International Medical Corps
Additional material support has been delivered in many forms from PQMD members including health care products and medicine from Project HOPE for Macedonia; pallets of hygiene products from Heart to Heart for Greece; and essential living supplies for migrant families and children at the Hungarian border from World Vision. In addition, the International Medical Corps is involved in direct medical assistance, with a particular focus on the Grecian Islands Serbia, Palestine, Yemen, Turkey, Pakistan and elsewhere.
Many members have also placed attention to aiding Syrians displaced within Syria during the civil conflict. For example, AmeriCares has donated two supplies of medicine to mobile clinics in Aleppo and Idlib, providing primary medical care for 10,000 people for three months.
PQMD is gathering a comprehensive list of both cash and kind contributions, and will continue to provide updates on what our members’ are doing to aid the humanitarian efforts and assistance to the Syrian people affected by the ongoing crisis.
