A snippet of omgyno's social impact

Words by Dr. Eliannore Boutros, program manager at omgyno and family medicine resident physician

It was mid-October 2024, and the war in Lebanon had escalated. Bombings had become part of daily life, and thousands sought refuge in overcrowded shelters across the country. We were all living in constant uncertainty, glued to our phones, waiting for the next piece of bad news. Functioning felt impossible. We kept asking ourselves how we could possibly continue our work when everything around us seemed so fragile.

Due to limited resources, many SRHR responses had to be selective at the time. Yet when a woman in need stands before you, telling her that her care is conditional feels like denying her dignity.

One day, our Instagram page pinged with a message from a woman we’ll call “D,” who had opened a shelter in Hazmieh, and received over 200 migrant domestic workers mostly from Sierra Leone. She asked if we had a mobile clinic. We immediately had one of those ideas that makes everyone roll their eyes—and then roll up their sleeves. “Hold on,” we said. “We can do so much better.”

Building a System From Scratch

I’m really fortunate to work with people who run toward challenges when most would walk away. That same day, we started sketching a plan: what if we could screen every woman in that shelter, test those who needed it, and offer teleconsultations? It sounded nearly impossible. The timeline was tight, the logistics demanding, and the stakes high. But the thing about our team is that when you say “no,” someone always asks, “why not?”

For the next two weeks, we lived on adrenaline. Dimagi offered us a free subscription to CommCare, a HIPAA-compliant platform built for humanitarian field work. Meedan offered to financially support our intervention. Dr. Sarab El Samad helped us design a simple triage system that anyone could use, even without medical training. Doreen and Rosa built the algorithm on CommCare, linking every step of the process, from registration to teleconsultation, and refined it by day and by night. And the rest of the team handled logistics: sourcing kits, coordinating with the lab, printing multilingual instructions, and running an online donation campaign. We barely slept, argued plenty, but kept moving. There wasn’t time for hesitation, only for making it happen.

Our Two Days in Hazmieh

We arrived at the shelter unsure of what to expect. The atmosphere was tense, but there was a quiet sense of purpose among everyone there. We had community health workers (CHWs) ready to help, though we’d never met before.

Day One was about training. We guided the CHWs on how to use CommCare, conduct the triage, and flag anyone needing immediate intervention or follow-up. By the end of the day, every woman in the shelter was registered on the platform, and the CHWs were confidently navigating a system they had just learned. 

Day Two was when it all came together. We turned part of the shelter into a small clinic with three stations: registration, test pickup and instructions, and sample drop-off.

Those who needed follow-up met Dr. Sarab via Zoom from France.

In a quiet corner of the shelter, they spoke to a doctor abroad while bombs echoed in the distance. It was a brief moment of calm within chaos, a quiet reminder of why we do this work.

Fears and Revelations

I’ll admit, in the days leading up to the mission, my mind was a loop of worst-case scenarios. Would the women feel comfortable and confident taking their own samples in a shelter? Would they be able to do it correctly? Would the triage system hold up? And after so many days of preparation and coordination, would all this effort actually make a difference?

What moved me most was witnessing our CHWs, a group of strangers who didn’t know us or each other, come together with complete commitment, and coordinate effortlessly to make this work. It just seemed like everyone directly found their rhythm.

And then came the women of the shelter. We had assumed they might struggle with self-sampling, but we were wrong. They followed every step with focus and confidence. Out of more than a hundred participants, only one needed help; the rest did it perfectly on their first try. It was us who learned that day to trust them, to trust their ability to take charge of their own health.

Of course, not everything went smoothly. We had some technical issues, a few dropped connections, but our team in Greece was always on call. Part of it was messy and stressful, but it worked. When the results came back from the lab and we were finally able to offer treatment and follow-up care; what I felt wasn’t relief, it was a quiet, collective pride.

More Than Just Test Results

We didn’t grasp the emotional weight of our presence until the women in the shelter began sharing their stories. Many told us how their employers fled when the war began, leaving them behind with no money or support. They spoke of surviving explosions, then finding one another in shelters—cooking, cleaning, and caring together like family. One woman’s voice trembled as she said: “A couple of days ago I was alone, and pregnant, fleeing the bombs. Now, I found myself with so many sisters here.”  

Looking back

 

Looking back, I still find it hard to believe how much we managed to do with so little time and resources. A small team building and implementing a system of care in two weeks in the middle of a war shouldn’t have worked—but it did.

It worked because of the people who refused to simply look away: the women who trusted us and trusted themselves, the CHWs who showed up without hesitation, the partners who offered their unconditional support, and a team that held everything together when things got hard. It wasn’t perfect, but it was real, and it definitely reminded us that even in the most uncertain times, dignified care can always find a way through.

 

Omgyno has been supported by the following partners, awards, grants, and fellowships