I‘m at a camp in north east Greece called Nea Kavala with a charity called Kitrinos Healthcare. We provide medical care to 600 refugees from Syria, Iraq, Congo, Palestine and Sudan to include a few, and there will be another 600 arriving in the next few weeks. We run entirely on donations. Our stock is incredibly limited. Much of it is out of date and many drugs are outdated. We see a lot of infected wounds, pneumonias, skin conditions, asthma, oral infections amongst many others which I can’t treat appropriately because we simply do not have the stock. Stocks are so low that we have to cut blister packs up to ration out meds as basic and cheap as paracetamol.

Many people are experiencing hay fever for the first time, some with severe symptoms and we can’t help them because we don’t have any antihistamines. Kids with asthma can’t be provided with inhalers so I have to give them steroid tablets because there’s no other choice. The camp is crawling with bitey things which make the kids scratch to the point where the skin is open to infection and we’re seeing many awful infected bites which we can barely treat with anything other than iodine.

The ECG machine is broken. The otoscope heads don’t fit. Everything is out of battery. We have no disposable gloves. We rely on boiling a kettle to sterilise our equipment.

The people live in metal containers the size of a small garage with no running water and no heating. Each container houses 5-6 people. Many arrive with nothing but the clothes on their backs and don’t even have a blanket to put over them when they first arrive.

We are asking for donations so we can buy supplies for the camp. Over the last few days I have already received donations (monetary and otherwise) from some very kind friends, but we could really do with more.

If you can spare anything at all we would be incredibly grateful. We have our essential needs and a list of basic home comforts like toys for the children and hygiene products. If you can donate and have any preference about what we buy please let me know.

Also, if anyone has baby/children’s clothes they don’t need if you could put them aside for me that’d be wonderful.

Thank you!