NEVER GIVING UP ON LIFE
The doctors under fire for saving lives
This is an emergency. Syria’s medical workers and hospitals are being systematically targeted because they are saving lives.
When the bombs fall, the wounded and dying are rushed to makeshift hospitals in caves, basements, and even living rooms. In these unlikely beacons of hope, doctors operating by the light of cellphones, using rudimentary equipment and insufficient medicine, manage to save lives everyday.
Against all odds, Doctors and medics work around the clock often not sleeping for days. Many live in the hospitals, sleeping in storage rooms, side by side with colleagues, only seeing their families after weeks of work.
Since Syria’s peaceful uprising was met with brutal force doctors have been systematically targeted as a tactical weapon of war. It has become apparent that anyone treating ordinary people on ‘the other side’ of their political view has become a valid target and their elimination is part of a deliberate strategy to take greater control.
More than three-quarters of Syrian doctors have fled since 2011. Those that remain have chosen to stay to serve, believing it their duty to save lives, even though it means risking theirs as hospitals are targets of daily airstrikes.
What’s happening in Syria is an unprecedented attack on hospitals, health workers, and the principle of medical neutrality in the history of the modern world. Syria’s heroic doctors and medical workers are doing all they can to save lives,but unless the world protects them from being targeted, there is a very real chance that soon there will be no doctors or medical workers left.
While Governments fail to act to protect them, people around the world can help make sure their lifesaving work continues. Please give what you can and help support Syria’s heroes.