After four years of hostilities, the Syrian war doesn’t show any signs of abating, and the needs for all kind of assistance grow more urgent every day. The situation is even more complex as medical and paramedical personnel have become targets of repression by the government. As a result, thousands of physicians have left the country and those still there face great challenges in providing health assistance to the population.
Due to the government tactics of placing huge communities under siege mean that doctors have to struggle to provide health care to the population, frequently running out of essential drugs and basic medical supplies. To make matters even more complex, some suppliers refuse to sell essential materials such as gauze or surgical threads for fear of being arrested or shut down for supplying basic elements to a besieged area, as reported by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF—Doctors Without Borders). A doctor reported to MSF, “It is precious, dangerous, incriminating. There are secret outlets supplying us with gauze.”
Because hospitals have undergone sustained attacks from airstrikes and barrel bombs, many of them have to operate below ground level. Some patients—particularly those under stable conditions—are kept at ground level and are moved to the basement once the shelling restarts. At least 610 medical personnel have been killed, and there have been 233 deliberate or indiscriminate attacks on 183 medical facilities, according to the report “Doctors in the Crosshairs: Four Years of Attacks on Health Care in Syria,” released last February by Physicians for Human Rights.
