"People Fears That Refugees Can Bring Sickness to The Country."

At 7 o’clock in the morning, our day was already started. Sixth day was the busiest one so far. At 8 o’clock we had a meeting with PD Dr. Med. Joachim Seybold MBA, the deputy medical director of Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin.

The number of the asylum seekers in Berlin was close to 80,000 in 2015. There is “dramatic increase” in the numbers of arrivals of refugees in Germany, especially in Berlin. Berlin was used to have low numbers of refugees and all the bureaucracy related to that wasn’t prepare for that inflect. So it was taking to much time to register a refugee, it was really difficult to access health care for them if you don’t have any paper telling that you are already registered. They were facing this situation where all those people had to live in refugee shelters, some of them were living in the buildings, some in tents and there were no access to medical treatment. Only in emergencies, like serious illness or something that can easily spread, they could see the doctor. At this point, Hospital of Charité, a large hospital which founded 304 years ago as a infectious disease hospital, decided to care for the refugees, the new citizens who has just arrived in Berlin; by establishing a practice in refugee camps. It was the decision of the hospital not the state of Berlin.

According to the anecdote that Mr. Seybold told the directors and deputy directors of the hospital thought that they should do something something for this issue. So, in one day, he sent a e-mail to every doctor working in Charité asking if they want to support this work for medical care for refugees. In two days, he received more than 130 affirmative answers, they were certain that they can start.

They started their project two years ago for refugees because they thought that the situation of Berlin was quite difficult. As Mr. Seybold worked with two doctors who immigrated from Syria, doctors could communicate much more easily with refugees. But generally they use translator for the communication.

The first refugee clinic was established in 10th September 2015 at Schmidt-Knobelsdorf-barracks. It took them two days to establish the clinic. As he said, it required rapid to build up an emergency team. It worked very well, and two weeks after they established the second one for two gyms at Glockenturmstrasse. They were also asked for open another one at Registration office which they opened it after a month, and forth refugee clinic at Turmstrasse. Interestingly, they didn’t ask anybody to establish this clinics, even the supervisor report(ministers in Berlin). They informed the supervisor after they started it, and the supervisor gave them full support. They’re also the first hospital to launch a clinic outside their own hospital. Plus, at the beginning, they were mostly volunteers. And step by step it got more professional. They didn’t have any budget problem because the hospital is owned by the state of Berlin, so luckily they never had a problem when they asked for money, they got the money from the state very easily.

They also built nationwide first Central Clearing Clinic to Provide Mental Health Services for Refugees because for them, it was more difficult to access to a mental health service. With this project the refugees can reach to a psychologist very easily. And most of the patient has relevant diagnosis in mental state like depression.

The authority for refugees actually is responsible for medical care for the first 15 months after the refugee gets This service covers just only vital operations or diseases (for example, it doesn’t includes denture) as Mr. Seybold said.

They made the mandatory initial medical screening including tuberculosis screening and vaccinations too. For this project, they ran a shuttle bus everyday from the refugee shelters to vaccinate the refugees that got registered but did’t receive a scanning at that time and vaccination either. Second step was to bringing their medical team to the refugees. Thus, they built up a vaccination bus: The bus has vaccination area, examination area (doctor’s office) and reception area. The most important issue about the vaccination bus the translations, so they established a online-interpreting translate system where you can talk with a translator of the language needed. More than ten thousand refugees came and got vaccinated. Most the patients of this clinics is Syrian (39%). But there is Afghan(31%), Iraqi(18%), Iranian(6%) patients too. And many of them is under the age 18. Plus 26% of the patients is under the age 5. When the refugees came in Berlin, almost 70% of them had infectious diseases which means common cold, easy to treat. For the rape case, once a week, a psychologist and a female gynecologist are in the clinics. About the common trouble of refugees, Mr. Seybold said: “Refugees come with injuries by guns. In addition there are raped women and traumatized children. This is challenging. They see also some tuberculoses cases but they got good vaccination program”. When we asked about diseases, he responded:

“People fears that refugees can bring sickness to the country. In Libya for example, there is higher risk to arrive here with infectious diseases. But when you look at the population, there is not a significant threat because we don't have that much people”.

To sum up, this speech destroyed the idea of right supporters on refugees: They don't constitute any danger for diseases because Germany treating them well. Indeed people like Mr. Seybold are the builders of cultural interaction.