How doctors from Syria’s diaspora are helping Homs rebuild its shattered health system

Special How doctors from Syria’s diaspora are helping Homs rebuild its shattered health system
Homs suffered heavy damage during the early years of the uprising against President Bashar Assad, which left hospitals and basic services crippled. (AFP)
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Updated 28 April 2025
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How doctors from Syria’s diaspora are helping Homs rebuild its shattered health system

How doctors from Syria’s diaspora are helping Homs rebuild its shattered health system
  • Syria’s 14-year civil war forced medical professionals to flee in their thousands, depriving the country of critical care
  • Diaspora doctors are now rebuilding services in Homs, with a focus on chronic conditions and mental health

LONDON: After 14 years of civil war, Syria’s largest province, Homs, has emerged from the conflict with its health system in tatters. Now, as families begin to return from displacement, diaspora doctors are stepping in to help revive damaged and long-neglected services.

Among them are more than 30 physicians and civic leaders from Chicago. The Syrian American delegation, led by Dr. Zaher Sahloul of the US-based nonprofit MedGlobal, conducted workshops in early April as part of the Homs Healthcare Recovery Initiative.




Over two days, Syrian experts from around the world came together to launch the Homs Healthcare Recovery Conference, organized by MedGlobal Organization International, in partnership with the Homs Doctors Syndicate, and under the auspices of the Health Ministry.
​​​​​​ (Source: MedGlobal)




The Syrian American delegation led by Dr. Zaher Sahloul of the US-based nonprofit MedGlobal conducted workshops in early April as part of the Homs Healthcare Recovery Initiative. ​​​​​​(Source: MedGlobal)

Sahloul said the scale of the crisis is staggering. “During the conflict, many physicians, subspecialists and allied health professionals left Homs,” he told Arab News. “The main hospital in Homs City, Al-Watani, was completely destroyed.”

The exodus of medical professionals left a “huge shortage of specialists, hospital beds and primary health centers,” highlighting “deep inequality in the distribution of healthcare, especially between the city and rural areas,” said Sahloul.




A handout picture released by the Syrian opposition's Shaam News Network shows destruction in the Juret al-Shiyah and the National hospital districts of Homs on April 17, 2012. (AFP file)

Outdated technology and a lack of medical supplies, equipment and medications have further hindered care.

Once dubbed the “capital of the revolution,” Homs was a key battleground in the uprising against Bashar Assad that began in 2011. Years of fighting devastated the province’s infrastructure, leaving hospitals in ruins and severely limiting access to basic services.

“Half of Homs city has been destroyed, and several other cities were heavily damaged, shelled, or under siege — including Palmyra, Al-Qaryatayn and Al-Qusayr,” said Sahloul. “A huge number of people fled Homs and became refugees or internally displaced.”




An image released by the Syrian opposition Shaam News Network on July 23, 2012 shows doctors treating a wounded man allegedly injured by Syrian government forces shelling at a field hospital in the city of Qusayr, 15 km from Homs, on July 14, 2012. (AFP)

By December 2013, almost half the governorate’s population had been displaced, according to UN figures. In the city of Homs alone, 60 percent of residents fled their homes.

Homs is not alone in experiencing such devastation. Today, only 57 percent of hospitals and 37 percent of primary healthcare centers across Syria are fully operational, according to the World Health Organization.

Insecurity and violence since the fall of Assad in December continue to disrupt health services, endangering both patients and medical staff.

Since March, surging violence in Alawite areas — particularly in Syria’s coastal region and the Homs and Hama governorates — has damaged six major hospitals and several ambulances, according to the UN Population Fund.




Homs suffered heavy damage during the early years of the uprising against President Bashar Assad, which left hospitals and basic services crippled. (AFP)

More than 1,000 civilians — including many medical students — have been killed in sectarian attacks, the UN children’s agency UNICEF said in early March. The hostilities have also triggered a fresh wave of displacement.




In this photo taken on October 29, 2015, hundreds of health workers participate in a "die-in" and demonstration organized by Physicians for Human Rights near the United Nations in New York City to draw attention to health workers killed in Syria. (AFP/File)

“The escalation reportedly caused additional civilian casualties and injuries, the displacement of thousands of families and damage to critical infrastructure,” Edouard Beigbeder, UNICEF’s regional director for the Middle East, said in a statement on March 9.

Within Homs, the healthcare system is particularly strained. According to a February WHO report, just seven of the province’s 17 hospitals and 58 of its 227 public health facilities are fully functional. Another four hospitals and 124 facilities are operating only partially.

Patients with chronic conditions face serious barriers to care. Cancer patients in Homs “have to go to Damascus to receive their treatment,” said Sahloul. “Patients with chronic diseases cannot afford their medications due to the economic situation.

IN NUMBERS

7 of 17 Hospitals in Homs that are fully functional.

58 of 227 Public health facilities that are fully operational.

(Source: WHO)

“Some patients on dialysis occasionally miss their treatments due to a shortage of dialysis kits. These kits are expensive, with each session costing around $20 to $25.”

The humanitarian crisis is compounded by economic hardship and continued sanctions. With monthly wages ranging from just $15 to $50 and about 90 percent of the population living below the poverty line, many cannot afford basic care.

Mass layoffs affecting about 250,000 public-sector workers have further strained the system.


The UN estimates that 15.8 million people will require humanitarian health assistance in 2025, even as funding continues to decline.

Mental health needs are also immense. “There are large numbers of war victims, including those displaced by violence and people who have lost family members,” said Sahloul, adding that torture survivors and former detainees are “deeply traumatized.”

He said: “As IDPs and refugees begin to return, the burden on mental health services grows.” 

The UN refugee agency, UNHCR, estimates that at least 1.4 million Syrians have returned home since the fall of the Assad regime. It projects that as many as 3.5 million refugees and IDPs could return by the end of the year.

“This means a growing number of people are coming back to areas with limited or no access to essential services like education, housing and healthcare,” said Sahloul. “All of this creates a situation that is nearly catastrophic.”

Given the scale of the crisis, Syria’s Ministry of Health cannot meet all needs alone. Sahloul highlighted the urgent need for support from NGOs and foreign governments to help sustain as well as rebuild the healthcare system.




Over two days, Syrian experts from around the world came together to launch the Homs Healthcare Recovery Conference, organized by MedGlobal Organization International, in partnership with the Homs Doctors Syndicate, and under the auspices of the Health Ministry.
​​​​​​ (Source: MedGlobal)

Aid agencies are stepping in. The UN Office for Project Services, in partnership with the government of Japan, is working to rehabilitate Homs Grand Hospital to restore critical services.

Similarly, the American Syrian Homs Healthcare Recovery mission, led by MedGlobal, has provided emergency supplies, performed critical surgeries and trained local healthcare workers in collaboration with Syrian communities.

Highlighting the initiative’s impact, Sahloul said: “Some teams began filling gaps in the healthcare system by donating funds for essential medical equipment, including a cardiac catheterization machine for Al-Waleed Hospital, an eye echo machine for Al-Harith Hospital, a stress echo machine for a public hospital, neurosurgical equipment for the university hospital and more.”

 

 

The mission, which began with a small team and quickly grew to include 650 expatriate physicians, has focused on three urgent priorities: Supporting dialysis patients, sustaining cardiac catheterization centers and addressing mental health.

“As part of the initiative, we provided dialysis kits across three different centers,” said Sahloul.

“Non-communicable diseases, not war-related injuries, are the primary health threat,” he added, citing high rates of smoking, hypertension, diabetes and fast food consumption.

The Ministry of Health has also inaugurated the Homs Center for Mental Health Support to assist survivors of torture and war.

However, Sahloul said that improving healthcare requires more than equipment and supplies — it demands addressing longstanding inequities between urban and rural areas, and among different communities.

“One of MedGlobal’s main missions is to reduce these disparities by identifying and filling gaps in healthcare access,” he said. “Historically, Syria has faced significant inequities between rural and urban areas, as well as within different neighborhoods based on their demographics.

 

 

“There are also disparities between major urban centers like Damascus and Aleppo, and the rest of the country. The eastern part of Syria, Hauran and the central regions were historically marginalized.

“By targeting these disparities, there is hope to ease tensions and begin healing a fractured society.”

Despite growing rehabilitation efforts and the commitment of local and international organizations, the scale of need still far exceeds available resources. As instability continues across Syria, both patients and health workers face daily risks.

The path to recovery is long and uncertain. Without sustained support, aid agencies warn, the country’s most vulnerable will remain at risk.
 

 


Qataris search for bodies of Americans killed by Daesh in Syria

Qataris search for bodies of Americans killed by Daesh in Syria
Updated 10 May 2025
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Qataris search for bodies of Americans killed by Daesh in Syria

Qataris search for bodies of Americans killed by Daesh in Syria
  • Search mission discussed in Qatari trip to US, source says
  • Daesh beheaded a number of Western hostages
  • Qatari mission begins before Trump visit to Doha

A Qatari mission has begun searching for the remains of US hostages killed by Daesh in Syria a decade ago, two sources briefed on the mission said, reviving a longstanding effort to recover their bodies.
Daesh, which controlled swathes of Syria and Iraq at the peak of its power from 2014-2017, beheaded numerous people in captivity, including Western hostages, and released videos of the killings.
Qatar’s international search and rescue group began the search on Wednesday, accompanied by several Americans, the sources said. The group, deployed by Doha to earthquake zones in Morocco and Turkiye in recent years, had so far found the remains of three bodies, the sources said.
One of the sources — a Syrian security source — said the remains had yet to be identified. The second source said it was unclear how long the mission would last.
The US State Department had no immediate comment.
The Qatari mission gets under way as US President Donald Trump prepares to visit Doha and other Gulf Arab allies next week and as Syria’s ruling Islamists, close allies of Qatar, seek relief from US sanctions.
The Syrian source said the mission’s initial focus was on looking for the body of aid worker Peter Kassig, who was beheaded by Daesh in 2014 in Dabiq in northern Syria. The second source said Kassig’s remains were among those they hoped to find.
US journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff were among other Western hostages killed by Daesh. Their deaths were confirmed in 2014.
US aid worker Kayla Mueller was also killed in Daesh captivity. She was raped repeatedly by Daesh leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi before her death, US officials have said. Her death was confirmed in 2015.
“We’re grateful for anyone taking on this task and risking their lives in some circumstances to try and find the bodies of Jim and the other hostages,” said Diane Foley, James Foley’s mother. “We thank all those involved in this effort.”
The families of the other hostages, contacted via the Committee to Protect Journalists, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The extremists were eventually driven out of their self-declared caliphate by a US-led coalition and other forces.

APRIL VISIT
Plans for the Qatari mission were discussed during a visit to Washington in April by Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani and the Minister of State for the foreign ministry, Mohammed Al Khulaifi — a trip also designed to prepare for Trump’s visit to Qatar, one of the sources said.
Another person familiar with the issue said there had been a longstanding commitment by successive US administrations to find the remains of the murdered Americans, and that there had been multiple previous “efforts with US government officials on the ground in Syria to search very specific areas.”
The person did not elaborate. But the US has had hundreds of troops deployed in northeastern Syria that have continued pursuing the remnants of Daesh.
The person said the remains of Kassig, Sotloff and Foley were most likely in the same general area, and that Dabiq had been one of Daesh’s “centerpieces” — a reference to its propaganda value as a place named in an Islamic prophecy.
Mueller’s case differed in that she was in Baghdadi’s custody, the person said.
Two Daesh members, both former British citizens who were part of a cell that beheaded American hostages, are serving life prison sentences in the United States.
Syrian interim President Ahmed Al-Sharaa, who seized power from Bashar Assad in December, battled Daesh when he was the commander of another jihadist faction — the Al-Qaeda-linked Nusra Front — during the Syrian war.
Sharaa severed ties to Al-Qaeda in 2016.


33 killed in Sudan strikes blamed on paramilitary RSF

33 killed in Sudan strikes blamed on paramilitary RSF
Updated 27 min 17 sec ago
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33 killed in Sudan strikes blamed on paramilitary RSF

33 killed in Sudan strikes blamed on paramilitary RSF

PORT SUDAN: At least 33 people have been killed in Sudan in attacks blamed on the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, at war with the army since April 2023, first responders said Saturday.
The attacks came after six straight days of RSF drone strikes on the army-led government’s wartime capital Port Sudan damaged key infrastructure including the power grid.
On Friday evening, at least 14 members of the same family were killed in an air strike on a displacement camp in the vast western region of Darfur, a rescue group said, blaming the paramilitaries.
The Abu Shouk camp “was the target of intense bombardment by the Rapid Support Forces on Friday evening,” said the group of volunteer aid workers, which also reported wounded.
“Fourteen Sudanese, members of the same family, were killed” and several people wounded, it said in a statement.
The camp near El-Fasher, the last state capital in Darfur still out of the RSF’s control, is plagued by famine, according to the United Nations.
It is home to tens of thousands of people who fled the violence of successive conflicts in Darfur and the conflict that has been tearing Africa’s third largest country apart since 2023.
The RSF has shelled the camp several times in recent weeks.
Abu Shouk is located near the Zamzam camp, which the RSF seized in April after a devastating offensive that virtually emptied it.
The United Nations says nearly one million people had been sheltering at the site.
On Saturday, an RSF strike on a prison in the army-controlled southern city of El-Obeid killed at least 19 people and wounded 45, a medical source said.
The source told AFP that the jail in the North Kordofan state capital was hit by a RSF drone.
The war, which began as a power struggle between army chief Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan and his former deputy, RSF commander Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, has spiralled into what the United Nations calls the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
It has effectively divided the country in two with the army controlling the north, east and center while the RSF and its allies dominate nearly all of Darfur in the west and parts of the south.


UN’s top anti-racism body calls for immediate Gaza aid access

UN’s top anti-racism body calls for immediate Gaza aid access
Updated 09 May 2025
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UN’s top anti-racism body calls for immediate Gaza aid access

UN’s top anti-racism body calls for immediate Gaza aid access
  • Civilian population ‘at imminent risk of famine, disease and death,’ statement warns
  • Israel has blocked humanitarian aid entering Gaza since March in bid to ‘pressurize Hamas’

NEW YORK CITY: The UN’s top anti-racism body has called for immediate humanitarian access to Gaza in a bid to avoid “catastrophic consequences” for its civilian population.

The statement by the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination — comprised of independent experts — came hours after the World Central Kitchen charity said it was forced to end operations in Gaza due to a lack of food.

It also follows a commitment by Israel to “conquer” almost all of the enclave, as well as disputes involving Israel, the UN and US over the appropriate way to deliver humanitarian aid to Palestinians there.

The CERD committee is convening in Geneva for its latest session, ending today.

Gaza’s civilian population, “especially vulnerable groups such as children, women, the elderly and persons with disabilities,” are “at imminent risk of famine, disease and death,” the committee said.

The warning follows an earlier appeal by the World Food Programme, the UN’s food agency, which said that almost all food aid operations in Gaza had collapsed.

Late last month, the agency announced that the entirety of its food reserves in the enclave had been depleted.

Since March, Israel has blocked humanitarian aid into Gaza in a bid to build pressure on Hamas, which still holds Israeli hostages.

Tom Fletcher, the UN’s emergency relief coordinator, said last week: “Two months ago, the Israeli authorities took a deliberate decision to block all aid to Gaza and halt our efforts to save survivors of their military offensive.

“They have been bracingly honest that this policy is to pressurize Hamas.”

Expanded military operations by Israel in Gaza over the past two months “have dramatically worsened the humanitarian crisis and severely endangered the civilian population,” Friday’s CERD statement said.

The committee called on Israel to “lift all barriers to humanitarian access, allow the immediate and unimpeded entry of humanitarian aid, and cease all actions obstructing the provision of essential services to the civilian population in Gaza.”

The statement also highlighted worsening conditions across the Occupied Palestinian Territories, including in East Jerusalem, where Israel closed six UNRWA schools this week.

Philippe Lazzarini, the Palestinian refugee agency’s chief, reacted with fury over the move, describing it as an “assault on children.”

The CERD statement called on all UN states to “cooperate to bring an end to the violations that are taking place and to prevent war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, including by ceasing any military assistance.”


UN committee warns of ‘another Nakba’ in Palestinian territories

UN committee warns of ‘another Nakba’ in Palestinian territories
Updated 09 May 2025
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UN committee warns of ‘another Nakba’ in Palestinian territories

UN committee warns of ‘another Nakba’ in Palestinian territories
  • During the 1948 war, around 760,000 Palestinians fled or were driven from their homes in what became known as “the Nakba”

GENEVA: The world could be witnessing “another Nakba” expulsion of Palestinians, a United Nations committee warned Friday, accusing Israel of “ethnic cleansing” and saying it was inflicting “unimaginable suffering” on Palestinians.

For Palestinians, any forced displacement evokes memories of the “Nakba,” or catastrophe — the mass displacement in the war that accompanied to Israel’s creation in 1948.

“Israel continues to inflict unimaginable suffering on the people living under its occupation, whilst rapidly expanding confiscation of land as part of its wider colonial aspirations,” warned a UN committee tasked with probing Israeli practices affecting Palestinian rights.

“What we are witnessing could very well be another Nakba,” it said, after concluding an annual mission to Amman.

During the 1948 war, around 760,000 Palestinians fled or were driven from their homes in what became known as “the Nakba.”

The descendants of some 160,000 Palestinians who managed to remain in what became Israel presently make about 20 percent of its population.

The UN Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices Affecting the Human Rights of the Palestinian People and Other Arabs of the Occupied Territories was established by the UN General Assembly in December 1968.

The committee is currently composed of the Sri Lankan, Malaysian and Senegalese ambassadors to the UN in New York.

“What the world is witnessing could very well be a second Nakba. The goal of wider colonial expansion is clearly the priority of the government of Israel,” they said in their report.

“Security operations are used as a smokescreen for rapid land grabbing, mass displacement, dispossession, demolitions, forced evictions and ethnic cleansing, in order to replace the Palestinian communities with Jewish settlers.”


Iran, US to resume nuclear talks on Sunday after postponement

Iran, US to resume nuclear talks on Sunday after postponement
Updated 09 May 2025
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Iran, US to resume nuclear talks on Sunday after postponement

Iran, US to resume nuclear talks on Sunday after postponement
  • Fourth round of indirect negotiations, initially set for May 3 in Rome, postponed due to ‘logistical reasons’

DUBAI: Iran has agreed to hold a fourth round of nuclear talks with the United States on Sunday in Oman, Foreign Minister Abbas Aragchi said on Friday, adding that the negotiations were advancing.

US President Donald Trump, who withdrew Washington from a 2015 deal between Tehran and world powers meant to curb its nuclear activity, has threatened to bomb Iran if no new deal is reached to resolve the long unresolved dispute.

Western countries say Iran’s nuclear program, which Tehran accelerated after the US walkout from the now moribund 2015 accord, is geared toward producing weapons, whereas Iran insists it is purely for civilian purposes.

“The negotiations are moving forward, and naturally, the further we go, the more consultations and reviews are needed,” Aragchi said in remarks carried by Iranian state media.

“The delegations require more time to examine the issues that are raised. But what is important is that we are on a forward-moving path and gradually entering into the details.”

The fourth round of indirect negotiations, initially scheduled for May 3 in Rome, was postponed, with mediator Oman citing “logistical reasons.”

Aragchi said a planned visit to Qatar and Saudi Arabia on Saturday was in line with “continuous consultations” with neighboring countries to “address their concerns and mutual interests” about the nuclear issue.