Dr Raba al-Sayed looked across the Euphrates river towards her family home in the east Syrian town of Al-Bukamal in Deir ez-Zor and was gripped by trepidation.
It was November 2017. With her husband, Adnan al-Jassim, and their four children, the family had finally managed to escape Islamic State, the Syrian government and Russian bombing, and were preparing to make the next stage of the dangerous journey to Al-Bab in the Turkish-controlled north of the country.
Jassim, also a doctor, had made a return visit to pick up medical equipment from the local makeshift hospital that could be useful when they arrived in the north. Then the airstrikes started.
“When I saw the plane pounding the place where we were living, my heart broke,” said Sayed. “[Jassim] was badly injured and needed parts of his feet amputated after we got to Al-Bab, but within six months he was walking and treating patients again.
“We chose to stay in Syria to help others … We thought we would be safer in Al-Bab. I could not imagine losing him to coronavirus.”
After fighting for months to keep coronavirus patients alive and trying to stop the virus spreading through the vulnerable community, Jassim was the first healthcare worker in areas of Syria outside Bashar al-Assad’s control to die of Covid-19 in September.
When the virus began to spread outside China last year, an outbreak in north-west Syria, where 1.1 million people live in tents and makeshift accommodation, was feared. The region’s healthcare system, decimated by a decade of war, was already struggling to deal with malnutrition and other diseases.
The pandemic did not properly take hold in rebel-held parts of Syria until the onset of cold weather at the end of the year. A total of 19,447 cases have now been reported, although the true figure is likely to be much higher because of inadequate testing, and coronavirus-associated deaths tripled between November and December, according to Ocha, the UN humanitarian agency.
Fears are high that another bitter winter will exacerbate the number of cases in displacement camps, while much of the rest of the world prepares for thearrival of coronavirus vaccines.
“It was already difficult to work as a doctor in Syria. The war has made it unsafe to be in your own hospital sometimes and we don’t have enough resources. And then coronavirus came,” said Dr Mustafa Mahmud, a fellow anaesthetist and intensive care doctor who worked alongside Jassim in three hospitals.
“Dr Adnan was a true leader. He organised groups of doctors to help us fight the pandemic, and he tried to raise awareness among the population about handwashing, social-distancing, masks…
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“Losing him was very painful. And we also lose all the people he could have saved if he was still here. We are a bit better prepared now, with more beds and facilities, but it is still going to be a hard winter,” he said.
Sayed agrees that rebel-held Syria faces a worsening health crisis. She is still recovering from a severe case of Covid-19, but says that continuing caring for others is the best way to honour her husband’s memory.
“Adnan was my whole life … he was a light for me, my children and his patients. That suddenly went out,” she said. “He loved to help others. We must carry on with the work.”
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