Today, I interviewed the chief of the Jordan field office of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). An estimated 1,827,877 Palestinian refugees live in camps in Jordan, in addition to the population of almost 6 million. UNRWA operates health clinics that are overcrowded and understaffed. They distribute JBCP literature in the camps and train their health workers in JBCP programs. They emphasize breast cancer awareness and self-exam instruction, and make those services a routine part of pre-natal and post-natal care.
Tomorrow, I'm going to observe a training session at a camp in Northern Jordan. Next week, I might get to visit other camps. (My mother has requested that I not tell her about anything scary-sounding until it's over, so I won't say where.) I'm excited to see how breast cancer prevention programs are put into action at the grassroots level, and how impoverished communities leverage their few precious resources to create change.
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