General practice in the UK’s response to the Türkiye and Syrian earthquakes

[摘要] This report was sent from Gaziantep, southeast Türkiye. The town’s name was omitted for security reasons.A 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck southeast Türkiye near the Syrian border on 6 February 2023 at 4.17 am local time, with its epicentre near Nurdağı and Gaziantep in Gaziantep Province.1 A second earthquake of 7.7 magnitude subsequently struck the same region 100 kilometres to the north of the first earthquake later the same day.2 Over 1400 deaths have been reported in the Government-controlled areas of Syria (and likely many more have been sustained in the country’s territories that are under the control of other actors),2 while over 45 000 deaths and 115 000 injuries have been reported in Türkiye.3In total, an estimated 9.1 million people have been directly affected by the earthquakes, including some 1.7 million Syrian refugees in affected regions, while 2.7–3.2 million people have been displaced due to the disaster.3In response to the earthquakes, the UK Emergency Medical Team (UKEMT) is currently providing a variety of clinical services from a field hospital in a heavily-damaged town located around 50 kilometres from Gaziantep in Kahramanmaraş Province.A substantial proportion of the town’s buildings — including its hospital, from which primary care is normally delivered — were destroyed during the earthquakes and their accompanying aftershocks, and many more rendered unsafe for use. While some 25 000 of the settlement’s 80 000 residents have evacuated the town, around 10 000 are living under canvas in formal or informal tented camps. In combination with the Turkish Red Crescent, the UKEMT is providing emergency, maternity, paediatric, and physiotherapy care, along with primary care services for the residents of the town. In this article I describe some of my experiences working as a GP in this context.LANGUAGE BARRIER Many Turkish–English interpreters stepped forward to assist the UKEMT in its response to the disaster. The majority of these are Turkish medical students who speak excellent English, and whose studies at local universities have been suspended due to the earthquakes. Their familiarity with clinical settings, patient care, and medical terminology, along with their Turkish nationality, means they are comfortably able to gain rapport with the patients we see, help us navigate the significant cultural differences (the patient population is largely a conservative Islamic cohort), and interpret ‘medical English’ in a manner that makes them utterly indispensable.

[学科分类] 卫生学