Fifteen-thousand Syrian refugees are expected to arrive in Canada by the end of February; most of them are in need of general exams by family physicians, and U of T doctors are doing their part to help.

Meb Rashid is a professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine (DFCM) at U of T and the director of the Crossroads Clinic at Women’s College Hospital, the first hospital-based refugee health clinic in Toronto. Due to the large numbers of Syrian refugees expected to enter Canada, Rashid created a program of rotating intake clinics comprised of family medicine health teams around Toronto to see refugees after they arrive in Canada for initial assessments.

Syrian refugees are checked twice for infectious diseases before coming to Canada, but chronic or latent diseases might go undetected, which is why seeing a family doctor is so important. Rashid’s network includes pediatricians, psychiatrists, dentists, and other specialists to provide quick and easy treatment for patients who need further care.

“I know from my own experience in Lebanon that Syrian refugees there have found it extremely difficult to receive adequate health care,” said Peter Goodspeed who is a journalist and volunteer at Lifeline Syria, an initiative to welcome and support 1,000 Syrian refugees as they settle in the GTA over the next two years through the help of sponsor groups. “So it is essential that they receive immediate attention on their arrival in Canada, simply to ease their own concerns and to speed and ease their integration into Canadian society,” explained Goodspeed.

Refugees may not seek out health care right away due to many different factors, such as difficulty in understanding Canada’s health care system. In late January and early February, Rashid’s network of clinics treated between 200 to 250 refugees in ten days. The network managed to see this many people, even though new refugees were not originally connecting with the clinics as quickly as they were arriving. The clinics were eventually able to reach such high success thanks to the help of Dr. Ben Langer and family medicine residents, who raised awareness of the clinics online and at meetings and fairs.

Some issues Syrian refugees are expected to face are uncompleted vaccinations, hypertension, diabetes, war-related injuries, and mental illness.

Concerns have been raised about a delay in psychological services for refugees suffering from post-traumatic stress or other psychological issues, but the refugee clinics around Toronto aim to offer friendly faces and a place to connect.

Many other U of T doctors are helping to connect Syrian refugees with health care as well. St. Michael’s Hospital doctors Ashna Bowry, professor at DFCM, and Gabrielle Inglis, U of T alumna, teamed up with Mike Evans, DFCM faculty member and YouTube creator, to create an Arabic-language whiteboard YouTube video. The video welcomes Syrian refugees to St. Michael’s Hospital and explains the procedures they will go through at the clinic. Evans said that the family medicine department wanted to create a welcoming experience for refugees.

“[W]hen you have more than enough, some people build fences… but some build a longer table,” said Evans. “We are in the table group.”

Thanks to the support of U of T doctors, the process of finding healthcare has gotten easier for Canada’s newest citizens.