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As the war in Syria enters its tenth year, daily bombing and shelling in the country’s northwestern Idlib province have displaced almost one million people in the last four months alone. Since January, eighty hospitals have been put out of service due to the relentless attacks.
And now there’s this: Syria confirmed its first case of COVID-19 at the end of March.
Before the coronavirus pandemic, the situation in Idlib was already one of the worst humanitarian crises on the planet. COVID-19 adds another layer of complexity to the catastrophe.
In countries such as Italy, Spain, and here in the United States, health systems are struggling to deal with surging cases of COVID-19. With the already grave conditions in Idlib, how will the fragile health system cope in the face of this pandemic?
The best way to avoid infection is to stay home. But how can people stay home when they have no home?Almost one million displaced people—one-third of Idlib’s population—live in tents in camps.
When a person shows symptoms of COVID-19, they are asked to self-isolate. How do you do this when many displaced families in Idlib are forced to share tents with others?
If you develop serious symptoms, you need to go to a hospital. But when only a handful of hospitals are open, and these hospitals are already overstretched from years of conflict and under near constant threat of attack, where can you go for care?
Our teams on the ground are doing everything they can to prepare for when COVID-19 reaches Idlib.We’ve set up hygiene committees in addition to new triage systems in three different hospitals to better identify and isolate patients who may have contracted COVID-19. We are also conducting training in patient-flow management in coordination with local health authorities and the World Health Organization (WHO).
Doctors Without Borders is putting everything we can in place to respond to this crisis as quickly as we can. Our monthly donors ensure we have the funds available to purchase the lifesaving supplies we need—before we need to use them.
COVID-19 will touch everyone around the world. Whether you are in Syria or Seattle, we are all connected. And just as this virus has no borders, we hope that medical care for those in need during these difficult times will have no borders either.
This email was sent from the U.S. section of Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), an international independent medical humanitarian organization that delivers emergency aid to people affected by armed conflict, epidemics, natural and man-made disasters, and exclusion from health care.
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