After nine years of war, Syria is broken into three rival parts unable to work together and ill-prepared to cope with the coronavirus, an enemy that knows no conflict lines, The Associated Press reports.
Medical personnel in Kurdish-run northeastern Syria have resorted to making protective gear out of garbage bags. The territory has been cut off from outside aid, including U.N. shipments that used to arrive from Iraq but were vetoed by Syrian government ally Russia.
In the last opposition-held enclave in Syria’s northwest, health officials are cobbling together what little they have to protect 4 million people crammed into a territory buckling under repeated government offensives. Promises by the World Health Organization to deliver ventilators, protection equipment and other supplies have mostly not materialized.
President Bashar Assad controls the rest of the country, including the main cities. WHO has steered most of its anti-coronavirus help through his government, forcing the U.N. agency to work with an opaque system that hasn’t extended help to non-government areas, AP adds.
Hardin Lang, a former U.N. official and vice president of Refugee International, said the more vulnerable territories should be the priority. He said that working with a government that often distributes aid based on political considerations “could be questionable when you have a population that is completely dependent on you and cross-border assistance.”
Syrian authorities have conducted coronavirus tests only in Damascus’ central lab, making it hard to track infections. The Kurdish-run northeast, also home to 4 million people, has had to send its samples by plane to the capital.
The flaws of the system emerged last week when Kurdish officials found out two weeks after the fact that a death in their area was from COVID-19, the illness caused by the virus. The Damascus government did not officially announce it or inform local authorities — nor did WHO, prompting accusations by Kurdish authorities of a cover-up.
WHO says it is dealing with a global shortage and is working to raise resources for Syria, which it calls a priority area. So far, Syria’s official count is 39 infections and two deaths, all in or around Damascus.
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