Local medical clinic asking for help to deal with expected influx of refugees

The Centre for Family Medicine Refugee Health Clinic in Kitchener typically helps hundreds of refugees coming to the region each year, but with the ongoing conflict in Ukraine and the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan last summer, numbers are increasing beyond what the clinic can handle.

“Typically in a year we receive 250 government assisted refugees but, now we're looking at about 450 government assisted refugees as well as 288 Afghan refugees.” said Wajma Attayi, the clinic's director of community services and strategy.

Attayi said those numbers equate to nearly triple the normal rate of refugees the clinic would normally help in a year. 

Attayi said part of the difficulty is that many of the new refugees coming to Canada have a massive language barrier and the skills to assist with that are needed when finding more medical help. 

“We are trying to find physicians that have languages and competencies through a cultural sensitive lens that's able to support us in our clinics” said Attayi. 

Attayi said currently the clinic only operates two days a week because of staff and resource shortages. 

“If we aren't able to get in the number physicians and nurses in place in order to ramp our clinic up to four or five days a week, we may have to keep at just two days, which will delay care.” said Attayi. 

Attayi said those who aren't medical professionals, but would like to help can think about donating items such as clothing to new refugees. 

For more information, you can visit the clinic's website.