To mark World Health Day on 7 April, Canadian photojournalist Lindsay Mackenzie has shared a series of photographs she made for the World Health Organisation in a Syrian refugee camp near Raqqa. The camp is currently home to around 18,000 people, a fraction of the more than 11.3 million Syrians who have been displaced by years of conflict.
Her images find moments of ordinary life amid extraordinary circumstances: a boy playing with a homemade kite, savouring the relative safety of the camp. The reality beyond its perimeter remains stark. On average, since January 2018, between 20 and 25 people have been wounded each week in Raqqa.
One photograph shows a father standing with his infant daughter outside their tent, near the camp's health centre. Raqqa itself was destroyed in the fighting, and what remains is littered with explosive ordnance. Until the city is de-mined, the families sheltering in the camp will not be able to return home.
Elsewhere, children play outside a WHO-supported health centre run by the Al-Mawada Charity Society. Staff at the medical clinic organise games and activities for the young, a way of helping them recover from the trauma they have endured. It also affords their parents the time to visit the clinic, where care is otherwise scarce.
