A range of potentially severe health problems, pregnancy complications and poor birth outcomes affect Syrian women who have fled ongoing violence in their native country for the relative safety of Lebanon.
The findings come from a new study authored by a recent graduate of the Yale School of Public Health who spent the summer of 2012 traveling to villages throughout northern Lebanon and the Bekaa Valley to interview displaced Syrian women. The paper was published this week in the journal BMC Women’s Health.
The survey by Amelia Reese Masterson, M.P.H. ’13, found that the refugee women reported experiencing a range of gynecologic and pregnancy- or delivery-related complications. The survey found that the displaced Syrian women reported suffering from severe pelvic pain, reproductive tract infections and menstrual irregularity. The study also found that participants who were pregnant reported experiencing adverse birth outcomes that included low birth weight, preterm delivery and infant mortality.
The study highlights how factors such as stress and anxiety affect the health of women who have experienced armed conflict and demonstrates the need for improved health services (including mental health and reproductive services) in refugee settings.
“Stress was found to mediate the relationship between exposure to conflict violence and self-rated health,” said Reese Masterson. “To truly reduce the variety of health issues Syrian women face in Lebanon, it is important for aid agencies and the Lebanese health sector to acknowledge stress as a critical factor—alongside barriers to accessing care such as price, transportation and the lack of female doctors.”
Since graduation, Reese Masterson has returned to Lebanon and continues her work with the refugee population. Many of the women that she interviewed reported that they had directly experienced conflict-related violence, abuse and/or sexual violence since the fighting started between government and anti-government forces in 2011. The number of Syrian refugees in Lebanon alone is now estimated to be at almost one million.
Adrienne S. Ettinger, assistant professor at the School of Public Health and senior author of the paper, said that it “provides some of the first quantitative data on the refugee population in Lebanon related to the ongoing conflict in Syria and much-needed baseline data to assess the rapidly evolving situation.”
The paper was also coauthored by Jhumka Gupta, assistant professor at the School of Public Health, and Dr. Jinan Usta, a family practice physician who supervised the field work and is affiliated with the American University of Beirut.