[stirling-palestinedirectaction] Fw: Andrew, Please help Palestinian refugees fleeing Syria

[andystuart at talktalk.net]

NewsletterHi All
I'd like to discuss the attached at tonight's meeting.
All the Best 
Andy
----- Original Message ----- 
From: Marta Petagna 
To: Andrew Stuart 
Sent: Thursday, February 28, 2013 12:19 PM
Subject: Andrew, Please help Palestinian refugees fleeing Syria


           


            February 2013


            Hi Andrew

            I hope you don’t mind me emailing you today but I need your help. I am MAP’s Director of Programmes in Lebanon and over the last few months I have been witnessing a humanitarian crisis in Syria that is escalating with every passing day. In the last few months an estimated 25,000 Palestinians have fled the country for Lebanon and they desperately need our support now. MAP is helping these refugees but we can only provide assistance because people like you are kind enough to make a donation.

            Syria has been home to half a million Palestinian refugees for 65 years, but the bombing of the largest refugee camp in December was a terrifying turning point that has shattered any sense the Palestinians had of being safe. An estimated 200 Palestinians are arriving in Lebanon every day.  UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency), the UN agency responsible for Palestinian refugees in the Middle East, has reported that, unlike Syrian refugees, Palestinians, coming from Syria are forced to pay a visa fee to enter the country. This is before they can even get to Lebanon’s overcrowded, hopelessly under resourced Palestinian refugee camps.

            The United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) is responsible for safeguarding the rights and wellbeing of all refugees in the world except Palestinians seeking shelter in countries where UNRWA operates. This anomaly limits the access to healthcare for Palestinians, because UNRWA, is chronically underfunded which  has led to severe rationing of its key health services, not to mention the overstretching of education and shelter services. So when Syrian and Palestinian refugees flee over the border into Lebanon, they don’t receive the same support as each other.This can mean that new Palestinian arrivals in the camps face a terrible dilemma. The drastically underfunded UNRWA has had to limit access to tertiary healthcare and can only cover medical bills of up to $4,200 per person.

            This may sound like a lot, but ‘tertiary care’ includes many serious and life-threatening conditions – illnesses like cancer and heart disease, for which treatment can quickly rise to tens of thousands of dollars in Lebanon. Most families do not have the money to cover these unaffordable costs; fleeing war, they have had to leave behind their homes and livelihoods.

            MAP is working with UNRWA and is committed to helping to pay the shortfall in hospital bills for people who need urgent life-saving tertiary care. We have already pledged to help Palestinian refugees from Syria cope as they arrive in the camps. 

            
            HOW YOUR GIFT TODAY COULD HELP: 

            £20 will help towards funding cancer treatment for a Palestinian refugee who has left Syria with nothing


            £50 can help towards funding the treatment for a refugee who is suffering from respiratory failure


            £100 will go towards helping a new Palestinian arrival, who is suffering from heart disease, to get the surgery they urgently need


            £400 could save the life of a baby suffering from severe dehydration.

           
              
           
           
            As more and more refugees continue to flee Syria we now need to raise £100,000 urgently to ensure that we can keep our promise while extending our existing project to help the incoming refugees.
           
              
              

            I am asking you today to make a donation so we can provide funding for people with complex medical conditions that could turn fatal without the right treatment. With your support, we can ensure Palestinian refugees get the support they need and deserve.

            Your donation today will help refugees like Hiba. She suffers from chronic kidney failure, but had to leave Syria without her medication, with only the clothes on her back. Hiba says, ‘We were all very scared, my family made the journey at night, which included young girls and young men, both of them targets for armed gangs. They submit girls to rape and sexual violence, and torture men suspected of being involved in the fight.’

            You will also be helping Palestinians like Thoraya, a 76-year-old grandmother who was living in Aleppo, north western Syria. Some months ago, she had a hip replacement but her hip became infected. As the clashes in Aleppo intensified, the provision of medical care in local Syrian hospitals got worse. The doctors left the city and medicines were not available anymore. Out of desperation she made the difficult journey to Lebanon, where she had family in the refugee camps. Thoraya worries that the medical treatment she needs is going to cost her $25,000.

            In both cases, the cost of Thoraya’s and Hiba’s treatment cannot be fully met by UNRWA. And neither of their families can possibly access the money needed to pay for their medical care.

            An urgent donation now can help us fund medical aid for more Palestinian refugees like Thoraya and Hiba. Without you, people with serious conditions will not receive the treatment they need. Lives we can save will be needlessly lost. All 12 official refugee camps in Lebanon suffer from severe poverty, overcrowding, unemployment, appalling housing conditions and no proper infrastructure. With the new influx of refugees, these problems will only increase. As will the chronic illnesses associated with living in these conditions. These desperate people will be pushed to absolute breaking point.

            I urge you to help us raise £100,000 by 8th March so we can fund the treatment of more people like Hiba and Thoraya, who are caught between war and poverty. Please donate today. Thank you for your support.

            Yours sincerely

            Marta Petagna

            P.S. Some Palestinians are so desperate for medical services that they are prepared to go back into the Syrian war zone to get them. Please help MAP provide the emergency aid they need

            P.P.S We promise to use your donation to support the health and medical care of Palestinians, wherever the need is greatest.

           IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO READ MORE ABOUT THIS SPECIAL APPEAL 


            Palestinian refugees fleeing Syria 
              
           
              
           
     
      For more information on MAP's continuing response please sign up to our E-newsletter - The Monitor 
      email us at info at map-uk.org or telephone us on 0207 226 4114 

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