Poverty and diseases in an IDP family in Idlib
Idlib – North-Press Agency
Bashar al-Fares
The family of Abdulaziz Freij, is a displaced family in Idlib that consists of a wife, a girl with Down syndrome and a disabled father who had an accident that led him to stay in such a state permanently. The family suffers bad living condition, especially after being with no breadwinner.
Abdulaziz’s only daughter Khuloud, was born after more than 40 years of his marriage, but they didn’t know what was hidden for them.
Khuloud is a twelve-year-old girl, but looks younger than her age, because she has got Down syndrome.
Down syndrome is a genetic disorder caused when abnormal cell division results in an extra full or partial copy of chromosome 21. This extra genetic material causes the developmental changes and physical features of Down syndrome. The symptoms differs from a child to another.
While in Kuloud’s case, she suffers from shortness of breath, a heart murmur, ischemia, and a dislocation. She struggles with her disabled father in coexisting her condition.
Khuloud’s father, Abdulaziz, an old man who had a motorbike accident prior to their displacement, which paralyzed him due to a spinal cord injury.
The family had been displaced from the village of Sinjar in the eastern countryside of Idlib, about three years ago, under heavy bombardment, the family moved in several areas to land at last in Rifatiya camp in Salqin countryside of Idlib.
Abdulaziz told North-Press that the family lives in a tent in the camp next to a village, where they “suffer the scourge of living inside it with dust, summer heat and others, in addition to the lack of the simplest necessities of life,” because he’s unable to work.
Moreover, Abdulaziz’s wife cannot work outside the tent either, because she has to take care of her husband and daughter, as she often remains unable to earn them a living nor can’t she support them in their movements.
“I’m too old to work outside, it’s difficult. I can barely care for my husband and daughter, especially that my daughter’s condition is deteriorating, and she needs to see a doctor on a regular basis since she has a heart murmur and suffers from shortness of breath.”
“We have no breadwinner, only our neighbors, who provide some material for us,” she added sorrowfully.
The family calls for help from the concerned authorities to rescue and treat its sick daughter, hoping for no further displacement amid recent military developments in the region of Idlib.