THE United Nations Security Council has voted in favour of a resolution calling for a 30-day ceasefire in Syria. The unanimously approved resolution, passed on Saturday, will allow for aid deliveries and medical evacuation to take place in Eastern Ghouta. Hours after the vote came, Syrian’s government forces launched a ground and air offensive on multiple fronts. But, doctors there have to carry on treating everybody regardless of the difference in political views.
After seven years of civil war, Syria’s humanitarian crisis has intensified as Bashar al-Assad’s regime is preparing to take back control of the besieged part of Eastern Ghouta, the densely populated enclave east of Damascus. Eastern Ghouta, home to 400,000 people, is the last rebel bastion near the capital. This has led to the intense bombing seen in recent days since Sunday, Feb 18.
The civilian casualties and devastation there are among the worst in Syria since the government captured rebel-held parts of Aleppo in intense fighting in 2016. The government and its allies have denied attacking civilians. They say they are trying to liberate the Eastern Ghouta from “terrorists”. The Eastern Ghouta is dominated by the Islamist faction Jaysh al-Islam, but Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, a jihadist alliance led by al-Qaeda's former affiliate in Syria, has a small presence there.
More than 500 people, including almost 130 children have been killed and more than 2,300 people injured. Exact death tolls are difficult to ascertain because some families bury the dead without taking them to hospital.
The medical system is on the verge of collapse after the air strikes which hit 22 hospitals and clinics. This has led to widespread claims that medical facilities in the besieged Syrian area are being systematically annihilated. Only three remain fully operational and all of them are overwhelmed by the mass casualties.
Equipment in operating theatres and intensive care units are out of date and there are only 105 doctors to care for all those trapped victims in Eastern Ghouta. This devastation has forced doctors to use expired drugs including anesthetic agents because they have no other option. In treating emergency cases, they also have to cope without key supplies, including antibiotics, blood transfusion bags and clean bandages.
Dr Waleed Awate described a desperate, chaotic scene at the small hospital where he works. “We had to give the IVs and treat them on the floor. The hospital’s generator, water tanks and several ambulances were damaged.”
The situation in Eastern Ghouta has increasingly alarmed aid agencies even before the latest assault, as shortages of food, medicine and other basic necessities continue to cause suffering and illnesses. Not that they have not suffered cruel sieges for the past seven years, but the people are now trapped in a daily barrage of attacks that are deliberately killing or injuring them.
Reuters reported that residents of Eastern Ghouta for seven days before ceasefire were “waiting their turn to die” after more pro-government rockets and barrel bombs fell on the besieged rebel enclave.
According to Dr Ahmad Dbis of the Union of Medical Care and Relief Organisations (UOSSM), more than 10 medical staff and volunteers have been killed and 20 injured.
Dr Dbis said medics were being forced to sleep at the hospitals because it was too dangerous to leave. Ambulances were also unable to transport patients because they were being intentionally targeted by air strikes.
Ellen Francis commented in Foreign Policy Magazine in 2016 that for many years the Assad regime has relentlessly targeted medical workers in rebel-held territory. Medics working in the chaos of Syria’s war are in constant danger from shells, gunfire and bombs but they also fear death for just doing their job.
Attacks on hospitals have left more than 750 doctors and medical workers dead, many of them in air strikes since the war began in 2011. A UN commission concluded that “government forces deliberately target medical personnel to gain military advantage, denying treatment to wounded fighters and civilian perceived to be opposition supporters as a matter of policy”.
Because of the duty to act in good faith and in the best interest of all Syrians, doctors have managed to establish secret medical units and rescue centres to treat people injured in the crackdown. The best location for a medical facility is on a narrow street, flanked by tall buildings, so that, after an air strike, helicopters and jets would have difficulty chasing the movement of wounded victims.
There is no mercy for doctors in Syrian war. The patients are not only exposed to attacks, they are also putting the lives of doctors who treated them at risk.
Dr John Kahler, Pediatrician from Chicago who came to Aleppo to help treat the wounded said, “You don’t just kill one doctor, you kill all his future patients.”
Doctors in Syria have to pay a higher price for a terrible war which they have nothing to do with. They try desperately to stay alive in order to save lives.
Dr Paridah Abd Samad, a former lecturer of UiTM Shah Alam and International Islamic University Malaysia, Gombak, is a Fulbright scholar and Japan Institute of International Affairs fellow