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Health Crisis Looms as Aid Organizations Pull Out of Syria

Heather Murdock

   QAMISHLI, SYRIA - Eight-year-old Sara hardly speaks anymore. She spends
   most of her time watching cartoons on a mobile phone in a rugged pink
   cover.
   One of her legs is severed above the knee, the other is broken.
   On Thursday, about 15 minutes after her family decided to flee the
   area, a bomb fell about 8 meters from Sara and her three siblings.
   Doctors say hospitals in northeastern Syria are already working beyond
   their capacity, as aid organizations evacuate their foreign staff. As
   Turkey continues to fight for a strip of land along its southern
   border, doctors say this war is turning into an unmitigated health
   disaster.
   "Any further crisis will destroy us," said Dr.FuratMaqdesiElias, who
   heads the Al Salam Hospital inQamishli, a city on the Syrian border
   with Turkey. "What do NGOs and the U.N. give us? They give us zero."
   Many Syrians here blame the United States for abandoning this region,
   after supporting Kurdish-led fighters against Islamic State militants
   for years. Turkey has long maintained it would create a buffer zone
   between it and the once-U.S.-supported Syrian Democratic Forces
   vigorously if it had to. It began assaults on the Kurdish region nearly
   a week ago.
   Turkey blames the PKK, a Kurdish militant group it equates with the
   SDF,whichhas been attacking Turkey for decades, leading to thousands of
   deaths.

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