How are mothers and babies faring in Greek refugee camps? April 29, 2020

To go back to something Lillian had looked at earlier in the level 4 alert period, we look at the situation for babies in refugee camps. Anne Merewood is one of the directors of CHEERing, along with her colleague Irini Azaar who is based in Greece. Anne is based in Boston working at the Boston University. CHEER stands for the Center for Health Equity, Education and Research in Greece. What they do in Greece specifically is work with refugee populations in the areas of maternal child health, health equity, and particularly in terms of infant feeding. This work is both inside the refugee camps, supporting breastfeeding and weighing babies and small children. They also train other organisations in these areas. Given they are not big enough to cover everything their main intention is to train other people in camps and working in camps to be familiar with infant feeding, needs and emergencies. Lillian got in touch with Anne earlier this month to find out what was happening for them in terms of the possible risk of Covid19 in refugee camps, and we ended up having a longer chat about some of the work CHEER does. 

Just a note this was recorded a few weeks ago now.