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Welcome to the archives of Syria Deeply. While we paused regular publication of the site on May 15, 2018, and transitioned some of our coverage to Peacebuilding Deeply, we are happy to serve as an ongoing public resource on the Syrian conflict. We hope you’ll enjoy the reporting and analysis that was produced by our dedicated community of editors contributors.
We continue to produce events and special projects while we explore where the on-site journalism goes next. If you’d like to reach us with feedback or ideas for collaboration you can do so at [email protected].
Exploring Syria’s healthcare crisis, including emerging diseases, chronic illnesses, the disintegrating state of healthcare facilities and the declining number of medical professionals.
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As pro-government forces surround the city of Aleppo, medical workers are stocking up on supplies in anticipation of an impending siege. Syria Deeply spoke to one of them, Dr. Rami Kalazi, about the health situation in opposition-held areas and the challenges of being a doctor in a besieged area.
Hospitals across the country are becoming increasingly common targets. Air strikes hit 112 Syrian medical facilities in 2015 and have already hit at least 13 so far this year, adding up to what some experts have deemed to be a “systematic destruction” of Syria’s healthcare system.
According to a report published this month by Physicians for Human Rights, the healthcare system in eastern Aleppo has been destroyed by government attacks on the city. Syria Deeply spoke with one of the report’s researchers to find out more about how healthcare workers are coping with the crisis.
The latest catastrophe to hit the Damascus-area Yarmouk camp is an ongoing outbreak of typhoid. Besieged by the government for years and invaded by ISIS in April, Yarmouk’s Palestinian refugees struggle for a way out.
More than five million children in Syria are in need of aid, according to UNICEF’s Juliette Touma.
Syria Deeply spoke to locals about the Assad regime’s attacks on medical facilities across the country.
“In the free part of Aleppo, there are no hospitals in the typical meaning of the word. They’re merely simple medical centers working 24 hours a day,” a doctor tells Syria Deeply.
The World Health Organization estimates that 2 million or more Syrians are suffering from mild to moderate mental problems.
“All cases were treated and documented, and we’ve sent evidence to many organizations and committees that can prove the use of toxic gases against civilians in Sarmin and Qminas.”.
Among the 110 exposed women, seven delivered newborns with serious malformations, of whom five died after a few hours to a few days and the other two survived.
“Today we only have one general surgeon and one orthopedic surgeon in all of al-Houleh, for more than 90,000 people,” a doctor in northern Homs tell us.
“Being under siege is like an endless night – a night that we’ve learned can get darker and darker. We have run out of basic food and medicine supplies so many times, we try very hard to keep a little extra.”.
“Every moment of every day I feel I have had enough, but we have no other choice. People here need us. They are in desperate need of all kinds of medical care, from the most simple to the most complicated.”.
When asked what would help them the most, almost without exception every nurse or physician said: “Stop the bombing.”.
“It is estimated that about 600,000 to 800,000 people have been injured because of the war.”.
Dr. Annie Sparrow spoke to Syria Deeply about the ongoing attrition and targeting of Syria’s doctors, and the rapidly deteriorating public healthcare system inside Syria.
Syria Deeply talks with the Red Cross’s Simon Schorno about their operations and how it works with combatants on all sides.
Amal Leila
‘I wish that the urgency that moved the U.S. and other governments to bomb ISIS was matched by an urgency to save the lives of civilians’.
Thousands of Palestinian refugees are trapped inside Yarmouk refugee camp, facing starvation, malnutrition, disease and now face a threat of lack of water supply.
Meet the group bringing medical care and therapy to civilians with blindness, cerebral palsy, autism and other conditions.
Four top photographers join MSF in documenting refugees in Jordan, Turkey and Iraq.
How a fluctuating refugee situation and ISIS’s ongoing offensive could foster the spread of illnesses like polio and measles.
Polio vaccination coverage in Syria has dropped from 99 percent before the crisis to just 52 percent, as a large part of the country remains under siege or in the line of fire.
Exposed to daily violence, kidnappings, deaths of loved ones and displacement, experts say hundreds of thousands of Syrians could be afflicted.
Like other besieged villages, Zabadani has been closed off from the outside world – and from any medical assistance.
Syrian regime forces have allegedly targeted hospitals as a weapon of war, and doctors and nurses have fled the fighting. Telemedicine offers a way to guide treatment of patients in intensive care.
One of the country’s most sophisticated remaining hospitals closing its doors. Syrian doctors say it will have a devastating effect on locals in Aleppo.
The province, which has been the site of heavy fighting between extremist factions, faces polio’s wrath 14 years after it last appeared in Syria.
Thousands of Syrians have lost limbs during the country’s three-year conflict. In the Damascus suburbs, two men have opened a workshop where functioning prosthetics are fashioned out of found materials.
A medical watchdog group says government forces are responsible for 90 percent of the attacks, with opposition groups contributing.
Maryam Saleh
The author remembers a source killed this month by a surface-to-surface missile.
In a pickup truck, walkie-talkie in hand, Abu Nidal patrols his Damascus province city, transporting victims to its only working field hospital.
Working in Aleppo province since the start of the conflict, one doctor says the number of injuries increased exponentially after a government barrel bomb offensive began there in December.
As Syria’s medical infrastructure implodes, sufferers of chronic illness struggle to find regular treatment. Meet Sana, a young Damascene living with a rare skin disease, and her father, who struggles to provide the care she needs.
More than 80% of the almost 600,000 Syrians in Jordan live in urban areas outside of refugee camps. With no sign of the conflict ending, local and international NGOs are trying to help Syrians cope with daily life.
As the government moves the remaining half of its chemical weapons cache out of Damascus, Syrian doctors in the field allege small-scale chemical attacks throughout the capital city’s suburbs.
As violence unfolds around them in makeshift hospitals near the front lines, Syrian medical staffers are increasingly prone to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and other mental ailments.
Fouad M. Fouad and Annie Sparrow, two doctors with extensive experience in Syria, weigh in on how big the infectious disease threat could become.
Nawwar, who works with the Syrian Arab Red Crescent, describes his work with the group in this mountainous region of southern Syria, where rebel fighting groups are fighting hand to hand with Hezbollah-backed government forces.
Maryam Saleh
In The National, Syrian activist Maryam Saleh argues that the return of infectious disease fears - and the continual crumbling of Syria’s medical infrastructure – is squarely the fault of the Assad government, a view that is popular with the opposition.
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