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I still remember the first child born at our centre - her name was Ghazal

15 May 2017
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Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) teams at the Mother and Child Care Center in Majdal Anjar, Lebanon work hard to ensure healthy pregnancy and safe delivery for Syrian refugees.

"I still remember the first child born at our centre,” says MSF Midwife Wesal. “Her name was Ghazal. The team was very excited about opening the center and rejoiced her birth; each one of us felt that Ghazal was her daughter.”

Ghazal’s mother Hansa, a yong Syrian woman from Idlib, remembers the delivery well. "We arrived to the center at around four am, the medical team welcomed us warmly. I remember that the weather was cold, so they turned on the heat and started preparing me for labour.”

“My delivery was easy, thank God. I spent the next 24 hours after delivery with my daughter under the supervision of the medical team at the centre. They were like family to me, so I did not feel like a stranger despite the fact that my mother and family were still in Idlib."

Majdal Anjar is considered one of the poorest regions in Lebanon and it hosts more than 80,000 Syrian refugees since the beginning of the Syrian crisis in 2011. MSF opened the new Mother and Child care centre in February 2016, to provide free reproductive health services and deliveries to more than 16,000 women of child-bearing age in the Bekaa area, specifically in the village of Majdal Anjar and its surroundings.

The Mother and Child Care Centre in Majdal Anjar is the third centre that MSF runs in Lebanon – with two others in Arsal in the Bekaa and Shatila in Beirut. These centres offer normal deliveries free of charge as well as prenatal care, antenatal care and postnatal care, in an effort to reduce maternal mortality. There is also reproductive health and family planning service available from a specialised medical team, committed to ensuring healthy pregnancy and safe delivery for all women.

Each month MSF teams receive around 100 natural births at the Centre. In the event of a caesarean delivery or other complications during childbirth, the medical teams are able to stabilise the patient's condition before moving her to one of the referral hospitals in the region.

“Referrals are not only done in the case of emergency, but also upon when a mother or child presents with problems that might prevent a normal delivery in our clinic. These health problems are detected from the routine visits to our clinic, starting from the fourth month of pregnancy," says the Centre’s Supervisor, Miss Mariam El Masri.

Hamida, a Syrian refugee who recently gave birth at the MSF Mother and Child Care Centre says that these repeated visits to the center during pregnancy were very important in her case. Throughout her prenatal stages, the midwife worked with a female gynecologist to make sure that both she and the foetus were in good condition and that she would be able to deliver her son Khaled naturally at the Centre.

"What touches me most is seeing the women who are in dire need of assistance, come to the Centre to give birth and then leave satisfied and happy with our services,” says Midwife Wesal.

The MSF Mother and Child Care Centre in Majdal Anjar is open day and night, seven days a week, to receive patients from Syrian refugees and those groups most in need.