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Since Typhoon Hagupit made landfall in the Philippines earlier this month, the Philippine Red Cross has been busy providing emergency relief and assessing damage in the hard-hit area of Samar Island.

The Red Cross has set up a basic health care unit in Dolores, Eastern Samar Province to provide services until health care facilities in the area can resume normal activities, with technical support for this clinic being provided by the Canadian Red Cross. 

Looking around Azraq refugee camp, in Jordan’s north-eastern desert, life seems peaceful, if rudimentary. Children run and play in the camp’s streets, parents shop at the central supermarket, and social and religious activities are growing as refugee families re-establish connections with neighbours. Some Syrian residents can be seen with crutches or other medical equipment, recovering from lingering wounds or long-untreated chronic illnesses.

Despite contracting Ebola, many patients in West Africa are recovering from the virus and returning to their lives with joy and a bit of fear due to stigmatization.

Mamadou and Patricia share their journey to recovery and reintegration into their community.

Yasmin sits in the paediatric ward of the Red Cross Red Crescent hospital in Azraq refugee camp, holding her two-month-old twin boys as they cough and wheeze. She appears calm and composed as she rubs the back of first Nadim and then Mohammed Nur. Both boys have developed an infection in the airways that lead to their lungs. The twins were born in Jordan days after Yasmin, 28, crossed the border as a refugee with her husband and two children.

Nawaf was three years into a challenging five-year bachelor’s degree in computer and information engineering in Damascus when the ongoing Syrian conflict forced him to put his dreams on pause. His family had already fled the country some 18 months before, but Nawaf, 24, and the oldest of seven siblings, stayed behind.

Nine-year-old Amnah arrived at the Azraq Syrian refugee camp in eastern Jordan scared and in pain. She had already spent three months being bumped from house to house, community to community, before being shuttled across Syria’s southern border with Jordan in the hopes of reaching safety – and medical care. Now one of nearly 12,000 Syrian refugees living in the Azraq camp, she has yet to see her new home, meet her neighbours or visit her future school. Instead, she has spent her first 10 days at Azraq in the Red Cross Red Crescent hospital, where the medical team is helping her to heal from a three-month-old gunshot wound.

One year has passed since Typhoon Haiyan devastated the Philippines, on November 8, 2013, affecting more than 16 million people.

Aimed at inspiring Canadians into action, musician and lifelong philanthropist Tom Jackson is releasing his new single “I’m Not Saying, I’m Just Saying”, which focuses on global wellness and the belief that, together, we can put an end to war.