In the middle of July, while visiting locations around PC Sombor, the APC team met a family from Syria with two small kids and during the briefing learned that they had tried to cross the Hungarian fence the previous evening, that mother F.S. (35) fell from a height of 4 meters and has been suffering from intense pain in her right shoulder ever since, and hence can’t move her arm.

The members of the APC team first advise the family to seek the help of the doctor on duty in the camp, in order to get a referral to the hospital. However, they state they are afraid that she can’t enter and be accommodated in the camp for she is a woman. After that, the APC staff stops and informs the worker of the Commissariat for Refugees and Migration (KIRS), who runs the camp, about the urgent need for accommodation and medical examination. He then calls his boss and informs that according to KIRS procedures, they can’t accommodate the woman nor can they allow her to be examined in the camp, because Sombor is a camp for singles.

Our APC team highlights that the family is sleeping outside and insists that the woman is in severe pain and is scared, so the officer says they should still admit her to the emergency department, despite she doesn’t have a camp card.

Since they were decisively rejected again, the APC team immediately goes with the injured woman to the emergency center in Sombor, where the APC lawyer at the counter insists that this woman should be admitted. The nurse takes the data and the injured woman is examined by a doctor. After that, she gets a referral for an X-ray, where she goes to have an image of her injured shoulder, and in order to receive adequate therapy afterwards.

This perturbed Syrian woman was very cooperative all the time with the representatives of our mobile team and with the staff of the emergency reception in Sombor, and during the whole medical assistance, the APC psycho-social staff provided her with psychological help, strengthening this woman who was crying from pain and the feeling of helplessness.

After the completed health intervention and appropriate therapy, i.e. her arm was splinted and she was prescribed medications for pain and inflammation, the APC team continues with attempts to place the woman and children in the reception camp in Sombor. The same efforts were continued the next day, while the entire family stayed outdoors, right next to the fence of the camp. APC officials understand that this way refugees are exposed to smugglers who then take money from vulnerable refugees to place them somewhere and organize further smuggling over the Hungarian wall/fence.