Assad & Putin Have Bombed So Many Hospitals In Syria’s Idlib Doctors Warn Health System Faces Collapse Under Covid-19

— New Report Says: WHO’s response plan for COVID-19 in North West Syria severely underestimates the number of likely cases and without significantly increased support the fragile and badly damaged health system will collapse

In February this years as hospitals were being bombed by the Syrian and Russian airforces doctors and humanitarian workers appealed to UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres to visit Idlib and see for himself the devastation and horrific suffering being inflicted on the most vulnerable through these crimes against humanity. He did not come and Covid-19 could collapse what is now a very fragile health system unless UN agencies especially the WHO significantly increase support.

New research by Doctors in Syria’s North West reveal that its fragile health system will rapidly collapse under the weight of Covid-19 unless the World Health Organisation urgently increases support and that WHO’s response plan for the region severely under estimates the number of likely cases.

Dr Munzer al-Khali the head of the Idlib Health Directorate said at the launch of the report that in other countries governments have tried to prepare their people to meet the extreme challenge posed by the coronavirus however in Syria the government of President Bashar al-Assad and Russia have spent the time destroying the health service bombing hospitals.

Dr Aula Abbara a consultant in infectious diseases and co-chair of the Syria Public Health Network described North West Syria as one of the most densely populated areas in the world underlining how impossible it will be to meet the challenge posed by the coronavirus when people are crowded together in camps without any facilities where not alone is it impossible to practise social distancing but even washing your hands is problematic.

The report: ‘The Covid-19 Forecast In North West Syria — The Imperative of Global Action To Avoid a Global Catastrophe’ was launched at an online briefing on Wednesday (May 6, 2020) organised by the Syria Campaign UK. The report outlined a chilling picture of vulnerability and underlined that after years of attacks since the peaceful uprising in 2011 by the Assad regime the region now faces it worst and potentially most devastating humanitarian crisis without urgent assistance.

Dr Munzer also pointed out that in-spite of the ceasefire shelling is a daily occurrence and if a truly comprehensive ceasefire was agreed it would allow up to three hundred thousand to return from areas around the Turkish border to camps for internally displaced people in the South of Idlib where they would have a much better chance of survival.

Against this alarming picture of unpreparedness after years of bombardment the psychological impact on the people unsurprisingly perhaps was identified as a big problem by Dr Mahmood Hariri, Director, Health Information System Unit in NW Syria which published the report. It is very hard to try to mobilise people to prepare for the challenge posed by Covid-19 when they tell you they also face death from chemical attacks, barrel bombs, serious water and food shortages Dr Hairii said.

Idlib in North West Syria subjected to blanket aerial bombardment by the Syrian regime and Russia targeting hospitals, schools, bakeries, residential areas and even camps for the internally displaced is now left so vulnerable that the series of scenarios offered in the report all showed how quickly the severely weakened health system could be overwhelmed and collapse under the weight of a Covid-19 outbreak.

In the last few months over 1.2 million civilians alone have been forced to flee in the face of the latest onslaught and have found themselves crammed into massively overcrowded camps with literally no resources on the Turkish border which remains closed to them.

For a number of years President Bashar al-Assad prosecuted a series of starvation sieges across Syria all of which ended with civilians being left with a choice of submission to regime control — of which most were too frightened to submit— or going to Idlib where the population rapidly exploded with today over four million living there with many having been forced already to flee multiple times with their families.

Meanwhile, the WHO has also been criticised for its performance in seeking to address Covid-19 in North East Syria after it withdrew demand for the reopening of the humanitarian aid crossing at Al-Yarubiyah on the Iraq/Syria border which caused uproar among humanitarian organisations because it is seen as vital in meeting the threat posed by the virus.