Under-equipped hospitals, tattered health systems, overcrowded IDP camps: northern Syria, from Idlib in the west to Kamechliye in the east, has many conditions conducive to the spread of the coronavirus. If no case of contamination has yet been identified, the medical and humanitarian personnel of these regions, outside the control of the Syrian regime, where 7 to 8 million people are crowded, are activated as if the epidemic was about to break out. A race against the clock is underway, in which the WHO does not really shine by its speed.
While the Organization provided tests to the Damascus government in early March, Idlib medical officials had to wait nearly three more weeks for delivery by the Turkish border crossing at Bab Al-Hawa . This region, where a fragile ceasefire has prevailed for a month and a half, is dominated by the group Hayat Tahrir Al-Cham, a radical Islamist group.
The situation is even more problematic in the northeast, the Kurdish autonomous area, which has not received any tests. However, air links exist between Kamechliyé and Damascus, the WHO headquarters in Syria. But the Syrian government does not seem in a hurry to let UN experts travel to the capital of Rojava, Syrian Kurdistan. In an open letter, 39 NGOs in the north of the country urged the organization to increase aid as soon as possible.
"Ink on paper"
"The health risk we face is compounded by the slowness of WHO, its bureaucratic functioning and the pressures that the regime exerts on it, deplores Mohammed Hassno, director of ACU (Assistance Coordination Unit), the humanitarian control tower in northern Syria. The action plan that was developed in early March is just ink on paper. " Finalized with the WHO, this plan provides in particular for the reorganization of three hospitals, to accommodate patients with Covid-19, and the creation of 28 quarantine centers. But, a month and a half later, implementation has barely started.
"We are doing everything in our power to consolidate preparations in the North West, but we are working under extremely difficult circumstances, says Hedinn Halldorsson, spokesperson for the WHO. The decomposition of the health system in this region, a consequence of nine years of war and massive population displacements, poses many challenges to us. " These explanations are rejected by researcher Mazen Gharibah, co-author of a study on Syria and the coronavirus recently published by the London School of Economics (LSE), which denounces "Instrumentalization" of the Organization by Damascus.
