Medical staff defies Syrian government, provides care for wounded civilians despite threats of arrest
BY: Claire Hadley, World Staff Writer
Published: Aug. 31, 2012
A secret field hospital in Syria operated by seven international doctors opened in June to care for victims of rebellion efforts to force President Bashar al-Assad from power and end the Arab Spring.
The organization behind the operation is Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres or MSF), an international organization that provides emergency medical care to millions of people caught in crises throughout more than 60 countries, according to Sandra Murillo, Senior Press Officer for MSF.
MSF works alongside more than 50 Syrian medical staff as wounded citizens pour into its hospital, a facility in an under-construction villa in an undisclosed city.
The Syrian government knows that the hospital exists, but the location is hidden, said Brian Moller, an Australian anesthetic nurse who worked with the operation, according to The Associated Press.
"They did not appreciate or like our presence," Moller added.
This is why the availability and willingness of Syrian medical staff to help out is impressive, given the context of the government's rejection of the program and threat of arrest, he added.
The Syrian government, which claims MSF is giving illegal aid to "terrorists," has been unable to find the hospital due to its covert location, said The Associated Press.
But wounded civilians, not terrorists, are the ones MSF staffers treat in makeshift operating rooms.
Many patients underwent surgical procedures at other locations before being sent to MSF. The lack of sanitary facilities and the strain of travel without proper recovery time caused those patients to suffer infection and illness.
Scarce supplies and minimal facilities at the MSF hospital also made it difficult for doctors to ease patients' pain effectively, though they did their best to provide lasting care.
Ninety percent of procedures are due to violence, predominantly from explosions and shelling, said Kelly Dilworth, an MSF anesthetist.
About 60 percent of victims suffer from explosions and 40 percent from gunshot wounds. The wounded sometimes take days to travel only a few miles for the help they need, going well out of their way to skirt checkpoints and other military operations. Some patients come from as far as 93 miles away.
A majority of patients are men, but up to one in 10 are women, and approximately one in five are younger than 20, MSF said.
As of mid-August, MSF admitted more than 300 patients and carried out 150 surgeries, two-thirds of which were emergency procedures, according to the MSF medical team.
The medical field hospital has about a dozen beds, a sterilization room, an operating room, an emergency resuscitation room and a recovery room, but it is poorly supplied and understaffed.
Katherine Holte, a Danish surgeon on the team said other, more rudimentary hospitals around the country learned about the villa and started sending their own patients.
Keeping with the trend of goodwill under the threat of oppression, another MSF group will admit about 50 injured Syrians a month to a reconstructive surgery project in Amman, Jordan. They are also offering psychological support and primary care to Syrian refugees in Lebanon.
An additional group of Syrian doctors is doing what they can to help the medical system in Turkey cope with the influx of refugees by offering free medical services to many of the 5,000 sick and wounded in Hatay, Jordan.
In the past two weeks up to 5,000 refugees a day have been crossing into Turkey, and the government has been warned by the UN that up to 200,000 could flee there if the situation worsens.
"After this clinic was opened we felt very comfortable coming here rather than going to a Turkish hospital," said Emahmad, a Syrian female refugee. "We can understand the doctors here. We speak the same language. I think Syrians feel happy that this clinic is here."
