Mr. Spengemann and members of the committee, thank you very much for the opportunity.
My name is Anas Al-Kassem. I'm a trauma and general surgeon who has been to northern Syria on at least 13 missions since the beginning of the war.
The Union of Medical Care and Relief Organizations has been focusing on Syria but recently started activities as well in Yemen. I'm going to focus, though, on the situation in northern Syria and the impact of COVID there.
There are over four million people living in northern Syria, with about 2.7 million refugees or internally displaced persons. All these people are in dire need of daily humanitarian aid. The sharp decline in the value of Syrian currency in the last two years has added more challenges to the daily lives of the displaced people, which has escalated the need for more humanitarian aid than ever.
Additionally, the spread of COVID-19 in northern Syria has been given priority by different parties of the humanitarian sector, as it impacted the vulnerable communities in northern Syria, particularly the elderly population who have pre-existing co-morbidities such as diabetes, COPD and hypertension.
Due to the widespread damage in northern Syria caused by the Assad government, there has been a lack of a government health system, as well as significant destruction of the infrastructure, including roads, houses, schools and hospitals, which have been systematically destroyed because of air strikes.
From July when the first case of COVID-19 appeared in northern Syria to the end of November, there have been 16,000 confirmed COVID cases, split between the major provinces of Idlib and northern Aleppo. More than half of these cases are active and there have been over 240 documented deaths.
The priorities of the humanitarian sectors in coordination with OCHA are as follows: containing the pandemic of COVID-19 by minimizing the need for hospital admissions, because of the significant lack of clinics and hospitals and equipment in northern Syria; improving the quality of life of the vulnerable communities by providing them with proper food, appropriate PPE and sanitizers; and supporting the hosting communities for these millions of displaced people by providing them with appropriate medical personnel and appropriate equipment before we need to transfer these patients to the hospital.
There is a lack of significant supplies and equipment, pre-existing COVID, including ICU beds, ventilators, monitors and oxygen generators, in addition to PCR machines with appropriate kits.
The plan has been focused on increasing the capacity of the pre-existing clinics and hospitals by adding disease prevention units and ensuring that appropriate drugs, PPE and oxygen are available in the houses before we need to transfer the patients to the hospital; two, creating a patient transfer system so we can smoothly transfer the patients when they need to be taken care of in the hospitals, particularly if they need ICU beds; and three, establishment of quarantine spots within the camps, particularly in the hot spots such as Dana, al-Bab and Azaz city.
Again, thank you very much for giving me this opportunity, and certainly I concur with my colleagues from Save the Children and UNICEF in their recommendations to Canada.