In this observer's opinion and based on observing SARCS work for the past few years, and tours this summer of many SARCS facilities, while spending hours in the company of SARCS staff and heroic volunteers, there is not a more humanitarian organization working in Syria today than SARCS. Granted, local and international politics sometimes makes their humanitarian work complicated to say the least. This observer has heard on the same afternoon from disparate sources that SARCS helps only the government areas with its work and other critics who claim that it only helps the rebels with its work.
My observations convince me that SARCS, like Medicines Sans Frontiers (MSF) and the Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS) helps everyone everywhere that it can. In fact SARCS, true to its motto "Helping Everyone, Everywhere: employs more than 1,592 staff and more than 6,000 volunteers working in 14 branches and 62 sub-branches. They are doing amazing humanitarian work for which we are all indebted. Just last year SARCS delivered various services to 4.7 million people, including 2.4 million people with medicines and medical treatment. In addition, 4.6 million Syrians received food and nearly one half million were given household essentials, over 316 thousand people received protection services through teams and community centers, plus 1.32 million people gained access to clean drinking water and sanitation.
Yesterday (9/6/2016), this observer learned from Dr. Darwish the dentist working to provide medical aid, along with a veterinarian and a former medical student inside Madaya that the besieged town is experiencing an unfolding meningitis epidemic. Fourteen cases have been reported over the past two weeks and more reportedly appearing nearly daily. The "medical team" explains that they cannot confirm 100% the diagnosis because "we don't have the tools to diagnose and treat patients."
Signs of viral meningitis, which Manal and Mohammad-Kamal both now exhibit, according to their mother Sahar who speaks regularly when she can get a call through, with the children's grandmother (Sahar's mother) still trapped in Madaya and who is trying to care for her malnourished and ill grandchildren. She reports symptoms comparable to the flu, and that the children today have headaches, a fever with cold hands and feet. They have no appetite. Manal and Mohammad-Kamal's case is one of countless cases in Madaya that cry out for humanitarian intervention to allow innocent civilians to live.
A British pediatrician at London's Great Ormond Street Hospital, the UK's largest pediatric center, contacted on 9/5/2016 on behalf of MSRCL, about Manal and Mohammad-Kamal's symptoms, advised that the UK National Health Service (NHS) urges children or adults exhibiting these symptoms not to wait for a rash to develop, but to seek medical help immediately. Later in the day The UK Doctor explained to MSRCL that babies and young children under five-years of age (Manal is 4 and Mohammad-Kamal is 3) are those most serious at risk for developing life-threatening bacterial meningitis because their body's defenses are not yet developed.
The gentleman urged immediate evacuation of Manal and Mohammad-Kamal. "These cases are especially urgent" he added "because Dr. Darwish reports that in Madaya's only clinic the medical staff do not have the medicines or the knowledge to treat meningitis or even the equipment to diagnose it." Dr. Darwish and his medical team attribute the appearance of meningitis to malnutrition of residents, weakened immune systems and high summer temperatures.
Along with Madaya's 40,000 residents, Sahar, the children's mother, fears that an epidemic is rapidly spreading. According to Dr. Darwish yesterday (9/6/2016), "We're afraid that some people may have a mental breakdown out of fear, paranoia is developing among residents, who are rushing to the field hospital with any of the signs of meningitis. Darwish confirmed from Madaya that his medical team suspects a virulent outbreak of meningitis, with the above noted 14 reported cases over the past two weeks. But they cannot confirm the diagnosis because "we don't have the tools to diagnose and treat patients."
Dr. Darwish's stated yesterday (9/6/2016) that his two-kilometer walk to work at the field hospital now takes him more than an hour and a half, because "hysterical" residents stop him en route for medical advice. "They ask, 'what are the symptoms of meningitis? I have those symptoms--do I have it?"
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