Access to Radiation Therapy by Syrian Refugees Displaced to Turkey

Abstract

For over 10 years, the Syrian conflict has caused millions of people to leave their homeland, causing one of the biggest refugee crises in modern history. Considering its prevalence, cancer is an important care burden among Syrian refugees. Radiation therapy is one of the essential parts of cancer treatment, and radiation oncology departments must guarantee optimal cancer treatments even in such a challenging setting when patients are displaced forcefully from their homes. National and institutional measures are highlighted in this manuscript to provide suggestions for the delivery of care during refugee crises. There are two issues creating barriers to serving refugee populations: the loss of access to their original care records in Syria for those with a previous diagnosis of cancer referred for continuation of radiation therapy or reirradiation, and the effect of acute radiation therapy toxicity on treatment compliance. (c) 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. on behalf of American Society for Radiation Oncology. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).