Mohammad Al Sheikh Ali
The phenomenon of field hospitals spread after the absence of governmental hospitals due to the regime forces excessive shelling of them or kidnapping the wounded and activists from them.
For more information about the reality of field hospitals work in the Syrian revolution we met with Mr. Tareq Najjar the manager of one of these field hospitals in Aleppo suburbs, where he started working in it since 1-10-2011, he spoke to us about his experience saying:
“We started working with an anesthesia specialist where we had nothing but a medical bag and some relief materials. Our capabilities were limited to treating the wounded from demonstrations, bandaging some of the injuries and sending them to Turkey, later on medical points were collected in each area”.
Regarding hospital equipments and the availability of health conditions in it he added: “this hospital is a large cellar where columns and walls were build in it, its location has been chosen to be an area that mediates Aleppo and its suburbs to facilitate accessing it from most areas being shelled. The preparation of this field hospital began on 15-8-2012, it includes seven air Conditions, ventilators to change the hospital’s air, operating Room and recovery room, both rooms are well-equipped, the hospital also includes two generators to operate the equipments in the event of a power outage”.
As for the accommodation capacity of the hospital, Mr. Tareq says: “there are 16 beds in the standard rooms, 3 in recovery and operation rooms, and 7 beds in the emergency room, we also have two ambulances, one is fully equipped and the other is a van to transport the wounded from other hospitals or the wounded in nearby areas”.
When asked about material support or funding received by the hospital, he answered: “all hospital equipments came from people’s donations or from relief organizations donations, the medical staff consists of 3 doctors, 10 nurses, 4 technicians, in addition to 4 cleaners. Sometimes the team works more than 20 hours continuously and it works on a voluntary basis because it aims to save people even if they were captives from the regime’s army or from its Shabiha”.
As for the cooperation and assistance provided by specialist doctors in Aleppo, he said: “Although the city of Aleppo is filled with medical staff, however, we didn’t find cooperation from specialists and doctors justified their rejection to the regime forces shelling operations targeting field hospitals and to other reasons including financials. Despite the availability of equipments at our hospital, however, there is a lack of staff working on them, such as (CT scan) where there is only one CT scan in all field hospitals and our hospital has this equipment but no one to work on it”.
For his part, general surgery specialist Dr. K.H, who attends to the hospital intermittently commenting that he only comes in difficult cases, explains that this is due to the high degree of experience and ability to deal with all cases the medical team of nurses has reached.
On the other hand, one of the injured in the hospital said that he received great attention and his surgical work was carried out successfully after being wounded from shelling the city of Aleppo. Members in charge of the hospital confirm that they handle all cases from civilians, military, and captives and not only the wounded due to military operations. They call upon all international, relief, and Islamic organizations to help all the wounded in Syria, but in return they affirm the continuation of making all efforts and doing their duty in saving what can be saved inside the field hospital. This is a confirmation that the Syrian people are alive, fighting, and resistant and that they can lead themselves if the whole world abandoned them.
Bazzaa Aleppo Coordination
A Syrian semi monthly, independent, political, cultural, social, and economic magazine
