Syrian health workers dealing with double tragedy after deadly earthquake

Shortly after the earthquake, ambulances reached Harim Hospital. (file)

Hareem:

While his wife and two daughters lay under the rubble after Syria’s earthquake, Abdelbasset Khalil took care of the hundreds of patients who came to his hospital.

Nurse anesthetist Khalil was already at work when a 7.8-magnitude earthquake shook Turkey and Syria last week, leveling entire neighborhoods and leaving a combined death toll of more than 35,000, including at least 3,581 in Syria Was.

As the earthquake shook the ground beneath him, he rushed out of the hospital to find that his apartment building had collapsed along with his family.

Speechless and overwhelmed, the 50-year-old walked back into the hospital ward to the endless stream of bodies of patients and victims, including the hospital’s administrative director and head nurse.

“I was visiting people in the hospital when my wife and daughter were buried under the rubble,” Khalil told AFP in the town of Harim in rebel-held Idlib province on the border with Turkey.

“I could do nothing” to save his wife or daughters, he continued.

He continued to work through his grief, scrambling to help the countless wounded with few supplies and meager means.

Khalil said the first day was “extremely trying and very difficult”. “It’s been like 50 years.”

On Wednesday, the bodies of his family members were recovered, leaving him sleepless and with a feeling of “complete helplessness”, he said, flipping through their pictures on his phone.

His only consolation was that they buried him in his hometown.

“I’ll always be able to travel.”

– ‘Disaster’ –

Shortly after the earthquake, ambulances arrived at Harim Hospital, which quickly filled with patients.

“It is a field hospital with modest and simple equipment,” said Mohammed al-Badr, general surgeon.

“It cannot accommodate more than 30 patients.”

He said the hospital was originally built to treat the wounded of Syria’s long-running conflict, which began about 12 years ago.

“The situation was already so difficult that patients often slept on the floor and in corridors.”

According to orthopedic surgeon Hassan al-Hamdo, the hospital has received about 2,500 injured people since Monday’s disaster, of whom 390 have died.

“In many cases, CT scans are needed, but they are not available anywhere in the region,” Hamdo said.

Supplies have been slow in war-torn Syria, where years of conflict have ravaged the health system, especially in rebel-held areas in the country’s northwest.

In a Friday report, the International Rescue Committee warned of a public health breakdown in northwestern Syria.

“The facilities are now running low on critical medical supplies such as serum, gauze bandages, pain relievers, medical ointments and blood bags,” it said.

Other urgent needs include fuel for generators and burial bags, it warned of worsening conditions due to harsh weather and “freezing temperatures”.

“Unless we get more funding, supplies and unrestricted humanitarian access, the consequences could be catastrophic,” it said.

– Call for help –

In the border town of Salqin, Hasan Joulak, a specialist in orthopedic surgery, said his hospital was treating 800 to 1,000 injured people, most of them with bone fractures.

“Fifteen minutes after the quake, the injured started arriving in large numbers, which overwhelmed the hospital’s capacity,” he said.

The challenges are not limited to rebel-held areas, with even regime-controlled parts of Syria facing acute shortages of skilled medics and proper equipment.

According to Ahmed al-Mandhari, the World Health Organization’s regional director for the eastern Mediterranean, “about 50 percent of health facilities are not functioning.”

“The ones that are working are short of equipment, short of staff, short of medicines.”

On Sunday, the United Nations condemned the failure to deliver much-needed aid to Syria.

In the government-held coastal city of Jabaleh, five doctors were killed and the city’s only hospital severely damaged in the disaster, according to hospital chief Mohammed al-Khalil.

Despite the lack of aid and its limited capacity, the hospital continues to operate, even as many medics have “lost their homes”, he said.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)