A doctor's letter from the besieged Syrian city of Homs...
I am a doctor working under siege in Homs, performing surgical operations in a basic hospital set up in an underground basement. The conditions in this field hospital are very bad, and it is especially hard to keep the hospital sterile. We have only basic surgical equipment and expired anaesthetic medication to treat the wounded. Patients who need blood transfusions are given blood directly from donors, and it is transfused without medical screening.
It has been five hundred days since a siege was imposed on Homs by Assad’s forces. Over 500,000 people have fled or died, but 3,000 people are still living here. Among the 400 families still here, most of the remaining family members are women, children and old people, and the injured who cannot move. These thousands of women, children, elderly and wounded survivors of this war are being denied access to the basic necessities of life.
For the past year and a half, this has been our life here: we have to drink from polluted wells and wash in sewage water. Food is restricted to lentils and bulgur wheat, and has been for months. There is no flour or milk or any kind of meat because of this siege.
We eat leaves and rotten rice. We have had no electricity for 500 days. We don't even have baby milk due to the siege. I see babies’ mothers who cannot breastfeed them due to stress and malnutrition: infants who should be healthy are starving and dying.
As for my job as a surgeon, we must transport patients through gaps in the walls across the neighbourhood because there are snipers outside. People move between neighbourhoods through underground tunnels. Many of the injured have died because it has been impossible to reach them. Our small medical facilities are frequently targeted, which has forced us to move our operations many times.
Of the patients we see and treat, many initially improve after surgery but then die a slow death during recovery because of poor nutrition and the lack of serums to keep them hydrated. Those who do survive often experience poor wound healing as a result of medical shortages.
Homs, my city, was one of the first places in Syria that hosted a UN delegation before the siege. The people of Homs gave them their best hospitality. My people stood in the streets risking their lives, all to get their voice heard. They are still waiting, five hundred days later.
We need to get this important message out and call upon the world’s media, the UN, NGOs and politicians to help break this slow killer, this inhuman siege. If you keep Assad in place, do not bother about withdrawing chemical weapons because at least, given the alternatives I see, it is a merciful way to die.
Please help us. Get us the deliveries of food and medicine that we need to survive, this is our basic human right. Does anyone hear the screams of women and children or feel the pain of the injured? Your brothers and sisters in the besieged neighbourhoods of Homs are right now screaming for your help. I hear them all the time. Isn't there any reply?
Dr Mosab is a surgeon in Homs. We have not used his full name to protect his identity.
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