In autumn 2022, we will start our MVI meets Friends Tour through Germany. During our tour, we want to draw attention to the ongoing catastrophic situation at the EU’s external borders, we want to show you ways to get involved, we want to meet other associations/organisations and initiatives and YOU.

You can find all the news about the tour at: https://medical-volunteers.org/mvi-meets-friends

Im Herbst 2022 ist es soweit, wir starten unsere MVI meets Friends Infotour durch Deutschland. Im Rahmen unserer Tour wollen wir auf die fortlaufend katastrophale Lage an den EU-Außengrenzen aufmerksam machen, wir wollen euch Möglichkeiten zum Engagement aufzeichen, wir wollen andere Vereine/Organsiationen und Initativen und euch kennenlernen und/oder wiedertreffen.

Alle News zur Tour findet ihr unter : https://medical-volunteers.org/mvi-meets-friends

In challenging times like these, it is good to hear stories that tell of humanity and mutual support.

Thanks to our tireless Medical Volunteers in Thessaloniki, we can tell such a story: a young man from Pakistan had to ask our team for medical help in July due to an almost completely shattered shoulder.

After three months and the unbeatable commitment of our team, he can move his shoulder more and more again. And that is almost a miracle. A car accident caused this incredibly painful and slowly healing injury to the refugee.

In mid-July the young man came to our clinic in Thessaloniki. The x-rays made it clear that the shoulder was severely injured and that there was only one possible way of treatment: an operation. However, that was anything but easy to implement. But our volunteers did not give up this time either.

Thanks to the motivation and passionate commitment of the team, the complicated operation on his shoulder was successfully carried out. It was like the task of a puzzle, the pieces of which had to be put together step by step. Day after day, the young man’s wound from Pakistan was treated by our team. The shoulder had to be immobilized for 45 days in order not to endanger the healing process.

One can only guess how difficult it must be to get through it all without the support and care of family members. The team was also in constant contact with the doctor who performed the surgery.

With increasing improvement in his physical condition, the patient was also able to gain more courage to face life.

His children and wife were so touched by this commitment and help that they thanked our team personally with voice messages.

With the help of physiotherapeutic treatment, we are now helping to mobilize his shoulder as fully as possible.

The wonderful care of our team has significantly influenced the life of this patient and gave a positive turn to the situation that seemed hopeless for him – we are deeply impressed and thank all supporters for this commitment to bring more humanity into this world!

No one has continuously provided physiotherapy for refugees, so we are now the first one to offer this specific kind of support. Most of our patients suffer from chronic back, neck and shoulder pain. Most of this pain is due to injuries caused by the living conditions at Moria Camp, lack of physical activity, bad quality mattresses or lack of mattresses, and much more. In our Physio-Center we can help these people in a focused and purposeful way.

Until now, Lesbos lacked a place for physiotherapy as an important component of their treatment approach. In the first week of April, after months of work and with enormous help of your donations, we finally opened our physiotherapy centre. It’s the first one on Lesbos that was created to treat fugitives.

Since its opening, we have offered physiotherapy, Feldenkrais movement therapy and massage courses. We want to offer some refugees internships nand practical training so they can perform their own treatment. The centre is open to everyone and we have already achieved great results with many of our patients.

Of course there are also some problems that we will have to solve in the next few weeks. One of them is that we only have one female physiotherapist, which means that women have to wait longer to get appointments.

Over the next few weeks we have organized a separate weekly course for men and women in which our therapists will teach and work together with a yoga trauma therapist. This is a two-hour lesson dedicated to back pain in order to teach the refugees exercises and stretching movements which they can then carry out independently. Our overall goal is to equip the refugees with their own skills and abilities so that they can help themselves and others in the future.

An increasing challenge is also that many of the refugees do not appear at their follow-up appointments. The main reason for this is that the Arabic and Farsi calendars differ from the Gregorian ones. This requires a high degree of communication and creative solutions. This area will be also closely worked on in the near future.

The new Physio-Center proves to be an excellent addition to the care of the refugees in every case. We will try, hopefully with your help, to maintain and expand this offer.