The supplementary mini kits will include 40-litre capacity cool boxes, battery-rechargeable fans that can continue to run an extra four hours when power is down, plastic sheets to replace the thick winter carpets and summer bed linens.
Another 5,400 or so summer kits have already been distributed to IDP families from West Mosul, who have arrived in the emergency sites since the end of March 2017.
IOM’s primary health centres in both Qayara and Haj Ali, home to 34,000 people, each serve an average of 1,800 patients per week with medication. Displaced people with scabies, mostly from neighbouring camps, have also been seeking treatment in IOM’s medical centre in Qayara, prompting the primary health care to set specific morning hours, exclusive to these cases.
In Qayara, an unfamiliar stillness has replaced the usually active emergency site during the heat of the day. Fewer children now play along the pathways between the rows of tents and the hustle and bustle, normally created by the crowds of men and women going about their daily chores, has drastically decreased.
Winter colds and flus have now been replaced by diarrhea and dehydration, with an increase in cases among children, and IOM’s medical team has had to order different medications to tackle the summer ailments.
“Children may become dehydrated as they play outdoors or forget to drink enough water,” explained IOM’s Dr. Ahmad al Shafei. “Sanitation issues also contribute to diarrhea amongst children.”
Thaer, 37, has just returned to Qayara with his youngest boy, a six-month-old infant, who spent two days in a hospital run by Médecins sans Frontières. The baby was treated for acute dehydration. Thaer and his children, as many IDPs are now doing, sleep outside their tent to escape the suffocating heat inside.
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