Health Care for the Helpless

Clinic serves low-income people from all over Middle East

*Names of clinic volunteers have been changed for security reasons.

Just a short drive from where Jesus once healed and served the poor, his followers make it a high priority.

To get an idea what goes on in this Middle Eastern office building, watch the flow of people into it any Monday or Thursday morning. Christians and Muslims. Iraqis, Palestinians, Egyptians. Name an Arab country, and it’s probably been well-represented.

All seek some level of health care. Most find a lot more.

In one room, volunteer physician Christina* counsels a young Jordanian man, Faroq, and his mother, Nawal. Faroq has severe asthma. Incompetent doctors have had him on steroids for 10 years – not advisable for any patient – and that’s caused other health problems. When he came here for the first time, he couldn’t eat or breathe comfortably. Now, after two weeks with simple asthma medication and a breathing chamber, he’s smiling. His mother is pleased and grateful.

“The Lord helps,” Christina tells them in Arabic. Faroq jokingly asks if the Lord can help him find a wife now.

In another room, nurse Martha checks a diabetic Egyptian man’s blood pressure and blood sugar levels. Another clinic volunteer counsels an Iraqi woman in her early 20s who has just learned she’s pregnant with a third child and doesn’t know how she’ll handle it.

In the lobby, optometrist Mary fits a Jordanian woman with glasses. The woman is thrilled that she finally can see the numbers on her cell phone.

War refugees and more

This building is the local headquarters for a long-established church, but on Monday and Thursday mornings it doubles as a free clinic. A crowded one.

This fairly stable nation has faced a humanitarian crisis: war refugees pouring into the country from neighboring Iraq. In this country of just over 6 million people, more than a million Iraqi refugees – Sunnis, Shiites, Christians – have flooded in over the past dozen years. Most seek refugee status from the United Nations and permanent residency in the U.S. or elsewhere, but that process can take years.

In 1998, Anna, an internist and pediatrician, founded what was then a once-a-month free clinic — at the request of an Arab Christian pastor — for Iraqi Christians who were attending the church. Once a month quickly became twice a month, then once a week, and now twice a week. Iraqi refugees, while fewer, still come in significant numbers. They’re joined by other poor people in the area. Each day of operation, the clinic sees about 50 patients – though the number is unpredictable.

Anyone can come in for an initial visit, but there’s a long waiting list for new patients to be seen more than once. On this Monday morning, patients’ nationalities read like a United Nations meeting:  Iraqis, Egyptians, Palestinians, Sri Lankans and Jordanians. The common denominator: great need.

“Basic living is hard here for them,” says Anna, who is of Palestinian descent and is married to an American pastor. “They don’t have money. The schools are not good. There’s a high unemployment rate. A lot of what we do is just loving them and caring for them and giving them the time of day – treating them as human beings whom God loves.

“I know a lot of our patients keep coming back every month or more than once a month, just to be in contact with somebody who will show them some compassion.”

Hard cases, hard lives

There are heart-wrenching cases, like the Iraqi woman who recently brought in her son. He had been raped by another man.

“They don’t have money, and his dad is dead,” said clinic volunteer Khatib, a local man who handles some of the social work.  “So it was really hard on his mom, to take care of him. And it was embarrassing, even, for her to tell people about it. But they came to the clinic and were willing to talk about it and to have his injuries treated.”

The clinic was able to send the boy to a specialist, who wrote a report to the court system.

Or there’s Safa, a 10-year-old girl. She has severe vision trouble and her mother has brought her to see Mary, a Texas-born optometrist who has been offering her services here since October.

“She has something wrong with her lens,” Mary says with concern. “Her eye is pretty abnormal. She can’t see past my hands to the middle of the room.”

Mary determines that Safa has a dislocated lens – a congenital condition – and needs corrective surgery. That’s far beyond the clinic’s capability. She could be referred to a specialist, but chances of her getting the surgery are slim, unless someone comes along with a donation to pay for it. That would be in the neighborhood of $2,800 U.S.

The clinic’s volunteer staff has to accept that there’s only so much they can do. Anna says that’s difficult – keeping their hearts soft toward patients without having them break, or harden, in order to deal with the weight of it all.

“I’m not doing very high-tech medicine,” Anna says. “But I think I am filling needs that otherwise are going unmet, as far as showing God’s love, God’s compassion, God’s care for these people … and also being able to treat some of their medical issues.”

‘Be Jesus to them’

In a country that’s 95 percent Sunni Muslim, the clinic makes no secret of its Christian affiliation. It’s located in the local ministry center of a well-known denomination that is registered with the government as a religious organization. The clinic is simply considered part of that.

“It’s a church ministry, and this is the home of the church,” explains Christina, a Dutch physician who’s volunteered at the clinic for four years. “So people are coming to our home, and what you do in your homes, that’s fine.”

Anna adds: “We want to be Jesus’ eyes and ears and hands to the people who come to see us. Jesus, I think, won people over with his love and compassion and meeting some needs. And that’s what we’re trying to do here – just be Jesus to them.”

Christians and Muslims alike come to the clinic and ask staff members to pray for them. For many, a smile or a touch means the world.

“We’ve had multiple people come in and say, ‘You’re the only people who have ever treated us as something more than dogs,’” Anna says.

Christina will take over leadership of the clinic when Anna’s family returns to America this summer. She came here because of her love for the Arab people.

“All the people who work here, their noses are in the same direction,” she says. “We are here to serve the people with our professions, but also to be open to emotional and spiritual needs.”

What you can do

Give

Donate today. The clinic is funded through donations, mainly the U.S. via ReachGlobal. That enables the staff to buy medicine and distribute it to patients who can’t afford it. The government doesn’t allow much medicine to be shipped in from elsewhere. So what’s purchased locally helps the economy here, too.

During the recession, clinic donations from the U.S. have shrunk to less than half of what they once were. “So we’ve had to cut back,” Anna says, “and our patients have felt the crunch from that. We need donations.”

One-time gifts also can be accepted to pay for treatment beyond what the clinic can provide, like surgery.

Pray

• That this ministry will continue without interference.
• That the transition in leadership will go seamlessly.
• That the love of Christ will be clearly evident in every volunteer staffer.

Learn More 

• About the vision God has given ReachGlobal’s for the MENA region.
• About other work in the MENA region.
• Go to the ReachGlobal homepage.