'No clear future': Yukoner witnesses plight of Syrian refugees in Lebanon

Trish Newport has worked in some troubled and volatile places in Africa with Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), but her recent stint in Lebanon — providing health care to Syrian refugees — reminded her what true desperation looks like.

"There's no clear future. Here they are, living in tents, and there's no idea about when they'll ever be able to return to Syria," Newport said.

She's back home in Whitehorse now, where she says "the Yukon wilderness keeps me sane."

Newport spent six months at the Lebanon-Syria border, where MSF has established free health clinics for the legions of refugees that have poured into Lebanon since 2011. 

That's about 1.5 million people, Newport says, a huge burden for a relatively small country.

"Right now about one in every five people in Lebanon is a Syrian refugee," she said.

'Underlying level of stress and tension'

Lebanon has no refugee camps, Newport says, so Syrians are living in "informal tented settlements" and their needs are great — not just for basic physical health care, but mental health care as well.

"That's the thing that's easily forgotten. With every bombing, with every attack going on in Syria, people that have fled are still having to re-live this nightmare, over and over again," Newport said.

"So our mental health program was growing and growing and I think it could even get bigger."

Newport never feared for her safety in Lebanon, but described the country as perpetually "tense" and "volatile."

"It was relatively calm, but things could change really quickly at any time. So there's always this underlying level of stress and tension.

"It really keeps me grateful for everything that I have here [in Yukon], and the life that I was born into, for sure."