Meet Dr.Ahmad, one of the medical professionals fighting on the COVID-19 front in Syria

My name is Ahmad Sayeyd Yusef, I live in Idlib in the northwest of Syria. I graduated medical school and I used to be an orthopedics surgery resident. Currently I’m working as an Internist and on the frontlines of COVID-19 in Syria.

I’ll start by introducing the idea of the isolation centers. Each center consists of four female and four male nurses, infection control officers, janitors, a manager, and an on call doctor. We are three doctors, each one of us takes two 24-hours shifts to cover the isolation center for the whole week. We start everyday by the morning rounds, we check up on the patients and conduct a clinical examination for each one of them, and then we update their meds list in accordance with test and examination results.  

Here’s how the morning rounds usually go, we start by wearing a protective suit and a N95 mask suitable for the pandemic. We start from the area designated for the people suspecting a COVID-19 infection, and then we move on to the area of the confirmed cases.  During this time, one of the nurses keeps registering new patients. We accept patients or refuse to do so depending on the center’s capacity as well as the severity of each case. 

We accept the cases that we can handle. We start by clinically examining the patient and then performing a PCR test. If the result is positive we give the people a choice, they can either isolate themselves at the center, or at home if possible. Most people prefer to isolate themselves at the center, only a few expressed their ability to do self-isolation at home. When they choose to do so and prove that their home is suitable for isolation, we provide the needed instructions and we let them sign a pledge to complete all of the isolation days at home.

Generally, we only accept non-critical and moderate cases of COVID to our center. We don’t accept critical cases in an isolation center as these kinds of cases need a hospital to get the proper care. According to WHO’s protocols critical cases should be treated in a hospital and not in an isolation center. Though we do follow those protocols, one day a patient came to our center. He was an elderly with blood pressure problems and an oxygenation level below 50. He had roamed all the hospitals and isolation centers with no luck of finding an available bed. We didn’t even have any oxygen cylinders at the time, but we had to accept him and do whatever we could to save his life. The whole center started working to acquire an oxygen cylinder at any cost, and we stayed all night providing care for him until we were able to find a slot for him in a hospital the next morning. This was one of the hardest days for us as a team, full of pressure, stress and heroic efforts. It was an example of how we sometimes have to do things we don’t do under normal circumstances. Thankfully, that patient recovered completely, Abu Ramiz is now back to his little shop.

We faced a lot of difficulties while responding to the COVID-19 crisis. For example, some lockdown rules should’ve been deployed in the area to slow down the spread, but that didn’t happen. At first COVID started spreading quickly among the youth filling the isolation centers with patients, but then COVID made its way to the elderly which was a huge disaster. During that period, as the number of deaths started to fly we started to feel helpless and guilty. There were some attempts to hide the number of deaths at first, but after a short period of time the correct numbers started to show. 

I can summarize a part of the challenges we faced as follows: The insufficient number of beds in hospitals in general and more especially ICU beds. The lack of enough oxygen sources. The lack of enough medicine. Insufficient resources in general was one of the hardest challenges. At one point it was difficult to get our hands on protective suits to protect ourselves while treating patients. Some of the challenges were even more basic, like the lack of proper heating in the medical centers. Something as fundamental as food was even a problem during the pandemic as all patients were eating the same meals. Normally, you’d have special meals for each patient depending on their medical status, so you’d have a meal specially prepared for cardiac patients, one that’s specially prepared for diabetic patients and so on. In our case during the pandemic we offered the same meals to all patients no. 

Here’s how all our week looks like: At the end of the week all of Idlib’s hospitals, isolation centers, and ICUs get packed with patients. Then someone brings a member of their families as they are  in the jaws of death with an oxygen level in the 50s, and asks us to accept them into the center. We don’t have the capacity to handle such cases, we don’t have the needed equipment. That patient gets stuck between packed hospitals where there are no available beds, and isolation centers that can’t provide them with the proper care.

Note: We had this conversation with Dr Ahmad at the beginning of 2021, COVID had recently made its way into Syria back then. We tried to get a new update about the current situation from Dr Ahmad, but he’s very busy dealing with a huge surge in cases in Syria as the Delta variant started spreading in Syria worsening the situation dramatically. We’ll try to get as many updates as we can about the matter and share them with our audience soon.

We met Dr.Ahmad through our friends at Violet as he works in one of their isolation centers. Huge thanks to all of the health workers in Syria and around the world for their huge efforts in fighting the pandemic.

Meet Dr. Abo Saad, the surgeon you watched in For Sama as he was saving a pregnant woman and her infant

I’m Dr. Abo Saad. I have been a general surgeon since 1993 and I have now been living in both Idlib and Aleppo’s countryside since we were forcibly displaced from Aleppo. This is my story over the course of ten years of the revolution. 

Since day one of the revolution, I provided free urgent medical attention to the wounded, both in my personal clinic and private hospitals. Once an operation finished, we used to transfer the patients to private apartments to protect them from the regime forces. 

As the situation developed and Eastern Aleppo got out of the regime’s control, I kept working for free in my personal clinic and East Aleppo’s public hospital alongside Dr. Abdulsalam Al-daeef and Dr. Mahmoud Al-Hariri, who were both doing amazing work at the time. The regime used to mercilessly bomb civilian areas all the time. We did dozens of operations with little to no capacity. Resources and equipment were low - we had to use whatever we could find in the hospital to do the procedures as safely as possible. 

I remember that in the first Ramadan of the revolution, I was the only surgeon doctor in the hospital and we received more than 40 injuries in one wave. We worked painfully hard, for too long. It almost felt like dying. One day, I was doing an open abdominal operation for a young man and during the operation, someone came to us terrified, saying. “Doctor, wrap up quickly! The regime forces will be in the hospital in an hour”. It was a very difficult situation. I turned to my surgical assistant and the anesthetic technician and said, “Will you continue this operation with me?” They said, “We’re with you no matter what”. We continued the operation and the young man survived. We had been lucky that time - that day, the regime forces fell back and were unable to enter Eastern Aleppo. 

As the regime’s attack on civilians escalated, people were in even more need of medical attention. I founded the first clinic in eastern Aleppo along with a dentist, internal doctor and gynecologist to provide medical care for people, and later we added a team for vaccinating children. I used to frequently go to Al-Quds hospital, it was a small clinic at that time, but then it was expanded into a hospital by Dr. Hamzah and Dr. Abdulsalam Al-Daeef. It was then that I transferred there to open the surgery department and start working at Al-Quds hospital.

I still remember a man in his sixties who had been shot in the chest by a sniper from the regime’s forces. He was barely able to walk when he arrived at the hospital. That morning, the generator was broken and I did a chest operation for him without any light, except small lighters and flashes! Fortunately, the man was discharged to return home once he was doing better. 

What made the people feel even more desperate, were all the tortured and killed detainees that the regime sent to us by the river. A lot of the people who had worked on pulling the bodies from the river came to me with nervous breakdowns. 

I used to do normal routine surgeries in Al-Quds hospital but when the shelling got more intense and the regime used barrel bombs on civilians we had massacre after massacre. There was a river of blood belonging to children, women, and the elderly. 

I always felt like the staff at Al-Quds hospital were like my children and my siblings - I was the one who fixed the disputes among staff members or between the staff and management. 

When the hospitals in the countryside needed a surgeon, I was always there, because saving lives in Aleppo or anywhere else is both my professional and moral responsibility. We used to go to the countryside through a road named “Alcastelo,” which means, ‘The road of death’. I remember one day I went with Dr. Hamza and Waad to support one hospital with their surgeries. We went through that road in the middle of the night - bombs were landing everywhere around us, and we were unable to turn on the car’s lights fearing the regime’s warplanes. We reached our destination and once I completed the surgeries, we returned to Aleppo the next day.  

Our staff did not only operate inside the hospital, they also used to respond to the areas that were hit and pull people from under the rubble. Al-Quds hospital was targeted more than once and we almost died on top of each other in the corners of the hospital. The hospital was targeted horrifically, the massacre of Al-Quds. Nurses, doctors, and staffers were martyred. One neighborhood was targeted heavily and after a few moments, a child named “Sahad” got to the hospital with a critical injury. We did an urgent operation and she survived, but she lost her mother and brother.

After the regime intensified its shelling on the area even more, I founded a hospital in a garage along the road in Aleppo’s southern countryside. I did some surgeries there, but after a couple of months the hospital was targeted, so we evacuated it. 

Aleppo was then besieged, and I hadn’t seen my family for six months. I spoke to them through the internet, I sent pictures of chocolate to my younger son - I sent roses to my wife and children. 

As she was on the road towards Al-Quds hospital to give birth, Maisaa, a woman in her 9th month of pregnancy, was hit by warplanes and injured in her abdomen, head, and limbs. I did an emergency operation to save her and her child, and the results were great. Not too long ago, a woman came to me at Al-Quds hospital in Idlib, with a five-year old child. It was Maisaa with her child. She was pregnant again and asking for advice that has nothing to do with the previous surgery, thank god. 

After we’d been displaced from Aleppo, I went to support the surgery department in Aleppo’s western countryside hospital. We were hit by the Russian and regime warplanes and the whole hospital collapsed over us, there were three injuries and one martyr, and I only got some minor burns. 

I helped the NGO Syria Relief and Development to create a hospital in a village in Idlib. Staff from Al-Quds hospital joined that hospital and started working until a separate place was provided for Al-Quds hospital to start again. After a few months, Al-Quds hospital was standing again in Al-Dana, Idlib and its staff transferred there. 

My only concern was always to look after Al-Quds hospital’s patients, and to serve the staff, help them, defend them, and make things better for them.

Independent: Protests after Syria appointed to WHO’s executive board

Protesters accused the Assad regime of years of attacks on hospitals

(AP)

Medical workers in Syria have protested furiously after the country’s government was elevated to the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) executive board.

They took to the streets in rebel-held Idlib after learning the regime of Bashar al-Assad had been appointed to the body after a vote that faced no debate or opposition.

The WHO’s executive board members hold three-year terms. They set the agenda for its health assembly – the decision-making body – and implement its policies.

Protesters noted the grim irony of the Assad regime’s appointment, following its years of bombing raids on hospitals and clinics during Syria’s bloody, 10-year civil war.

“We reject the idea that our killer and he who destroyed our hospitals be represented on the executive board,” read a banner carried by some of the protesters on Monday. Some two dozen medical staff members protested outside the main health department.

Rifaat Farhat, a senior health official in Idlib, said Saturday’s vote “contradicts all international and humanitarian laws”.

Salwa Abdul-Rahman, a citizen journalist based in Idlib province – the last rebel stronghold in the country – said he feared a representative of the government could try to cut medical aid to the region, which is home to millions of people.

Hundreds of medical centres have been bombed, mostly in government airstrikes. Half the remaining hospitals and health facilities are functioning only partially or not at all, while 70 per cent of Syria’s medical personnel have fled.

Source: Independent

More than 20 killed in air raids on Idlib by the regime

At least 21 people have been killed in Syria's rebel-held Idlib province as Syrian government forces and their Russian allies intensified an air offensive on the country's northwest, according to rescue workers who operate in opposition-held areas.

The Syrian Civil Defence, also known as the White Helmets, said air raids and barrel bombs on Wednesday struck a vegetable market in the town of Ariha, as well as repair workshops in an industrial area, a few hundred metres away from the market.

At least 19 people were killed in the attacks on the market and the nearby shops, including a Civil Defence volunteer, Ahmed Sheikho, a spokesman for the group, told Al Jazeera.

A man was also killed in the village of Has as a result of a Syrian government air raid, Sheikho said, while a young girl succumbed to wounds sustained in a previous attack, which took place before the latest ceasefire was implemented.

The least 82 people were wounded in the attacks on Wednesday and the death toll is likely to increase, according to the White Helmets.

21 innocent people have lost their lives today, and 82 others have been injured, as a result of the regime/Russian terrorist attacks on #Idlib and #Ariha market and many other places in northern #syria. The number of dead will climb as many are critically injured. pic.twitter.com/OSbgkynMz2

— The White Helmets (@SyriaCivilDef) January 15, 2020

The bombardment engulfed several vehicles in the industrial zone, leaving the charred corpses of motorists trapped inside, an AFP news agency correspondent said.

Mustafa, who runs a repair shop in the area, told AFP he returned to find the shop destroyed and his four employees trapped under the rubble. It was not immediately clear if they had survived.

"This is not the neighborhood I left two minutes ago," Mustafa said.

People inspect destruction caused by government air raids in the town of Ariha, Idlib province [Ghaith Alsayed/AP Photo]

The attacks come days after a brief lull. The ceasefire brokered by Moscow, which supports the Syrian government, and Turkey, which backs the rebels, faltered on Tuesday night when air raids hit a string of towns in the southern part of Idlib province.

Since December 1, around 350,000 people, mostly women and children, have been displaced by the renewed offensive, the United Nations said on Thursday. 

Sara Kayyali, a Syria researcher for Human Rights Watch, said nearly four million civilians are "essentially trapped" in Idlib due to the relentless bombardment. 

"It's likely that many of these attacks on protected civilian infrastructure, where there is large civilian presence and no real military target, are likely to be war crimes," Kayyali told Al Jazeera.

The northwestern region is home to nearly three million people, about half of whom were transferred there in large groups from other parts of the country which had been held by rebels and were retaken by pro-government forces.

Source: Al-Jazeera