Request to send mobile clinics to Syria

Humanitarian crisis shocks WHO

THE WORLD Health Organisation (WHO) has asked the Syrian government for permission to send mobile clinics and medical teams to the besieged town of Madaya to assess the extent of malnutrition and evacuate the worst cases, its representative said yesterday.

An aid convoy on Monday brought the first food and medical supplies for months to the town, where thousands are trapped and local doctors say some have starved to death.

Elizabeth Hoff, the WHO representative in Damascus who went into the town of Madaya on Monday in a UN convoy, said the agency needed to do a “door-to-door assessment” in the town of 42 000 people, where a Syrian doctor told her 300 to 400 people needed “special medical care”.

“I am really alarmed,” Hoff said, speaking by telephone from the Syrian capital Damascus, where she has been based since July 2012.

“People gathered in the marketplace. You could see many were malnourished, starving. They were skinny, tired, severely distressed. There was no smile on any faces. It is not what you see when you arrive with a convoy. The children I talked to said they had no strength to play.”

An international aid convoy entered Madaya, besieged by government forces, where thousands had been trapped for months without supplies and people had been reported to have died of starvation.

The WHO brought in 7.8 tons of medicines including trauma kits for wounds and medicines for treating both chronic and communicable diseases, including antibiotics and nutritional therapeutic supplies for children, Hoff said.

“The female doctor said mothers had absolutely no milk for breast-feeding, the milk had dried up and the babies are not satisfied,” she said.

Many malnourished people were too weak to leave their homes.

“We need to go in with the Syrian Arab Red Crescent for a door-to-door assessment to verify these cases and make sure they get urgent treatment,” Hoff said.

“I sent an immediate request to the authorities for more supplies to be brought in. We are asking for mobile clinics and medical teams to be dispatched.”

She added: “We need unhindered, sustained access, the only thing that will help in the long term is lifting the siege.”

The WHO simultaneously delivered 3.9 tons of food each to Foua and Kafraya, two villages in Idlib province encircled by rebels fighting the Syrian government.

Hoff visited two medical sites in Madaya, one a private practice based in a home run by two doctors and the other a makeshift field hospital in a basement. Neither had any supplies.