The local council in the town of Irbeen in the Damascus suburb of eastern Ghouta said that nearly 600 children need urgent medical evacuation from towns and villages of the besieged suburb. It said that children are in critical conditions amid continued siege the Assad regime imposes on the rebel-held area.
The media office in Irbeen quoted pediatrician Yahya Abdel Hamid as saying that 579 children in eastern Gouta need urgent medical evacuation for treatment as their health conditions continue to deteriorate.
Among these children, 13 children have already died while only 12 have been evacuated, Abdel Hamid said, adding that the rest of the children suffer from chest and hepatic diseases as well as a shortage of vaccines.
Last week, Fayez Orabi, spokesman for the Directorate of Health in Rural Damascus, told Inab Baladi newspaper that increasing number of children are dying from chronic diseases that continue to worsen because of the siege imposed by the Assad forces on the area.
Orabi said that children are the most vulnerable to injury and death due to lack of medicines and shortage of doctors as well as the Assad regime’s deliberate bombing of hospitals on a daily basis.
Orabi pointed out that there were severe shortages of all medicines, especially those for chronic diseases such as hypertension, diabetes, epilepsy and neurological diseases amid lack of natural alternatives to these medicines. He said that medical facilities in the area have severely depleted their supplies and are becoming unable to provide medical care for residents of the area.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on Sunday announced that his country was ready to receive the sick wounded from the eastern Ghouta.
Meanwhile, the French newspaper Libération on Friday published the text of an open letter sent by two French doctors to French President Emmanuel Macron sounding the alarm on the deteriorating situation in eastern Ghouta.
Doctors Ziad Alissa, president of UOSSM France and Raphael Pitti anesthetist-resuscitator, humanitarian doctor and administrator of UOSSM France medical charity urged the French president to press for the immediate evacuation of the sick and wounded and the delivery of medicine and food to civilians trapped inside. (Source: Syrian Coalition’s Media Department)
