SYRIAN ACTIVIST: OUR CITIZENS HEALTH GETTING WORSE
Istanbul , 13 Safar 1435 / 16 December 2013 (MINA) – The Syrian Opposition Health activist, Mustafa al – Haj Hamed stated the condition of millions of Syrian citizens in and out of the country are getting worse.
“Millions of Syrian citizens are suffering due to the ongoing conflict. Many of them live in uninhabitable refugee camps scattered in Lebanon , Jordan , Turkey , Iraq , Egypt , and South Africa,” Hamed told MINA( Miraj Islamic News Agency)’s reporter, Nur Ikhwan Abadi in Istanbul.
” There are approximately six million internally displaced refugees, scattered in various districts such as in Aleppo, al – Hasakeh, ar – Raqqa , Deir – ez – Zor , Hama , Homs , Idleb , Lattakia , Rural Damascus, and Tartus ,” he said in the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) Conference in Istanbul , Sunday.
According to Assistance Coordination Unit (ACU) report, Syrian refugees now really need food, warm clothes as well as Education and homes. The Syrian children refugees in Lebanon did not get an education yet because of the differences in curriculum with what they got in Syria, while Lebanese government banned the Syrian curriculum applied in its territories,” Hamed added.
Due to the winter, number of Syrian citizens died from extreme weather and lack of Drug and Health services.
At least a million Syrians are going hungry, as fighting and checkpoints prevent aid deliveries from reaching them, the international Red Cross warned.
“A conservative estimate is a million people without food,” said Simon Eccleshall, crisis management chief at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), Ahram Online reported.
The IFRC’s local member, the Syrian Arab Red Crescent (SARC), is the key player in international operations in Syria, where around one third of the pre-war population of 21 million now relies on aid to survive.
But aid efforts have been hit by fighting, which has claimed the lives of 32 of the SARC’s 3,000 volunteers, while multiple checkpoints by both sides raise repeated hurdles.
“The SARC has access only to about 85 percent of the territories in Syria on a regular basis,” Eccleshall told reporters.
It is able to provide regular supplies to just half of the six million Syrians driven from their homes by the war but still inside the country.
“There are many areas that have not been supplied for months due to the conflict and suburbs around Damascus for almost a year,” IFRC spokesman Benoit Carpentier told AFP.
“Obviously, the worst situation is in besieged areas and areas with severe violence. One should also remember that many have not had any income for more than two years. Female-headed households is another big group facing food insecurity,” he added.
Eccleshall said there were grave concerns that with the onset of winter, the number needing aid could spiral. Syria’s two largest cities Damascus and Aleppo regularly get snow.
Three million Syrians have also fled to neighbouring countries, escaping a conflict that has killed more than 120,000 people.
IFRC has doubled its Syria aid appeal from 53 million to 106 million Swiss francs (43 million to 86 million euros, $58 million to $117).
It has only one third of that sum in its coffers, and will be unable to supply food aid by the end of February if more aid is not forthcoming. Aid agencies fear growing “compassion fatigue” after almost three years of war in Syria.
“The main challenge that we have today is that for many people in the world, this situation became ‘normal’,” said Walter Cotte, the IFRC’s under-secretary general.
“We need to really highlight that there is a big humanitarian crisis killing people every day,” Cotte told reporters. ( L/K01/NIA/R1/P04/E1) .
Mi’raj Islamic News Agency ( MINA )
