The injuries are countless … Corona is killing Syria, amid an exhausted healthcare system

Syria is experiencing a significant increase in coronavirus cases, in light of a healthcare system that has been affected due to the 10-year war, according to the New York Times.

The newspaper emphasized that the cases of coronavirus infection in Syria are innumerable, that there is no organized and independent data collection, and that the government data tends to hide the difficulties facing the country.

For example, the Syrian Ministry of Health reported a total of 8,580 injured as of December 9, while the Security Council counted, according to reports from the interior of the country, at least 30,000 injured at the beginning of the month. And many say that the real numbers are likely much higher.

And the UN Security Council reported that cases more than quadrupled in October and November compared to the previous two months.

Dr. Michael Hessler, medical director of the nonprofit Physicians for Human Rights and professor of internal medicine and public health at the University of Michigan, said: “There is no question that rates of infection and death from COVID- 19 in Syria announced by the government are lower than the real ones and are not reported. Significantly informed “.

He added: “For years, the Syrian government and its Russian allies have targeted health workers and health facilities as a strategy of war, leading to the deterioration of the health system and its inability to prepare it to respond to the epidemic.”

Since the conflict began in 2011, Physicians for Human Rights has documented 595 attacks on health facilities in Syria. The organization attributed about 90 percent of them to the Syrian government or its Russian allies, and 923 doctors were killed.

According to the World Health Organization, the shortage of numbers, combined with the disastrous state of hospitals in Syria after a decade of civil war and the acute shortage of medical professionals, leaves millions of people at risk of serious consequences if become infected. Emergency physicians make up just 0.3 percent of the nation’s public hospital staff.

“Implementing social distancing measures in the camps is a fantasy,” Keren Barnes, director of Mercy Corps in Syria, said in March, “but if we want to prevent a large-scale outbreak, we must make it happen.”

The Doctors for Human Rights report confirmed that Syrians are forced to pay bribes to enter hospitals and obtain care when infected with the virus.

A humanitarian worker in southern Syria said: “We do not know the actual number of injured. The death toll should be in the tens of thousands, if not more. The whole family is full. “