Fleeing Bombs to Battle Cancer
BEIRUT – WHEN 6-year-old Fatima al Abed was admitted to the hospital in early 2016 with a fever that turned out to be a symptom of leukemia, her family was already facing a host of other problems.
They had fled the war in Syria three years earlier, finding refuge in the Lebanese town of Arsal, a remote settlement in the barren hills on the country's far eastern edge and just across the border from the Syrian village of al-Jarajir, where Fatima's family is from.
But the war followed them: In 2014, Islamic State and Al Nusra militants launched attacks on a Lebanese Army post in Arsal, leading to a five-day battle followed by an Army blockade of the town that was still ongoing when Fatima became sick.
She remained in a local hospital in Arsal for nearly a month as doctors puzzled over her condition, says her father, Zakaria al Abed. Because of the security cordon and restrictions on Syrians coming and going from the village, he had to go through a series of bureaucratic steps – including finding a Lebanese sponsor to help him renew his lapsed residency permit – to get permission to take his daughter to a pediatric specialist in the larger town of Chtoura some 45 miles away and then to Beirut for treatment.
After initial tests showed that the girl likely had leukemia, the doctor referred the family to the Children's Cancer Center of Lebanon, a specialized center connected to the American University of Beirut Medical Center and also affiliated with St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee.
"And thank God, they accepted our case and helped us," Abed says. He was sitting in a waiting room at the center with his daughter, now a bright-eyed 9-year-old who likes to draw and play games of make-believe with her siblings. She was nestling her head into the crook of his arm as she awaited her weekly chemotherapy treatment, which would be one of her last.
After three years of treatment, Fatima finished her chemotherapy in May and today appears to be cancer-free.
Fatima's case is emblematic of the difficulties young cancer patients face in conflict zones and surrounding refugee-hosting countries. A scarcity of treatment centers at home – some bombed from war – an influx of refugees that overwhelms existing hospitals and clinics in host countries, a lack of money to afford care and security checkpoints in restricted areas converge to create barriers for accessing care. The girl's case also shows the coordinated response that has sprung up to ensure that Syrian children would continue to receive cancer treatment as their country fell into a brutal and protracted conflict.