“Nowhere is the urgency for public health outreach more apparent than during a refugee crisis. To mark the third anniversary of the Syrian Civil War, NBC News Chief Medical Editor, Dr. Nancy Snyderman and her team travelled to Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley in March 2014. By then, the war’s collateral damage had extended to 5.5 million Syrian refugee children who were homeless, malnourished, under-vaccinated, and pouring across the border into Lebanon. NBC News committed itself to showing the plight of the refugees in a real-time arc and convey to our viewers, what many consider to be, the greatest humanitarian crisis of our time. Dr. Snyderman and her team accomplished this by producing a “live documentary” spanning 48 hours of coverage, airing on TODAY, Nightly News and NBCNews.com with live webcasts, articles and blogs. In her reporting, Dr. Snyderman related to the refugee children and their families as a reporter, doctor and mother and underscored the toll this war was taking as a medical crisis. Fragile health systems have crashed and on the Lebanese side of the border, are overwrought and burdened. Dr. Nancy Snyderman was given unprecedented access inside The Taanayel Hospital for refugees. She profiled doctors and nurses who faced extraordinary burdens of patients and exercised heroic efforts to keep the population well. When a child was suspected of having polio, she was able to explain how Syria’s once proud health care system had been decimated and was there when representatives from the WHO came to investigate. The team followed families from the hospital back to refugee camps where groups of children who, once in school, were now digging potatoes out of the ground to feed their families. Meanwhile NGOs attempted to keep infectious disease at bay with ongoing inoculation campaigns, and Syrian women gave birth to babies with birth defects all because there was an absence of prenatal care. The team eye witnessed birth and death; fear and grief, and the resilience necessary for survival . The Snyderman team also carried out an unparalleled social media and engagement strategy bringing viewers inside the tragedy and posing viewers’ questions to the refugees that they met. They did this through two live webcasts; the first webcast originated from the overcrowded Taanayel Hospital, and the second revealed the horrors of starting life over in the desolate Fayda Refugee Camp. Online coverage complemented and enhanced Dr. Snyderman’s reporting, bringing her audience additional insight on childhood trauma, the impact of being under-vaccinated and malnourished and aid workers who dedicated themselves to play and laughter in hopes of healing traumatized children. The “live documentary” effort was a broadcast and digital age first. NBC News is proud to submit “Forgotten? Syria’s Children of War” for the Awards for Excellence in Health Care Journalism.”
