The Interim Ministry of Health in the opposition's government that operates in liberated areas has been suffering lack of support by the international community, the Minister told Ammar Johmani .
Mohammed Firas al-Joundi detailed that number of disabled has reached a million, and there is urgent need for support to provide services to hospitals and health centres, besides the need for Psychological centres to help in treating the damage done by the war and its psychological and emotional effects.
The Minister has explained that the number of wounded people since the start of the revolution and till 2017 reached to 3 million, a third of them have moderate to severe disability.
He detailed that the humanitarian organisations provide support to almost 900,000 disabled Syrians and their families inside Syria and displaced people in Lebanon and Jordan, Iraq and Turkey.
Dr. Al-Joundi mentioned that the exact number of disable people still not possible due to ongoing war, but is it expected to be more than 400,000, and they spread over 147 sites all over the country. “whatever the number is, there is no doubt that hundreds of disabled people do not receive even the minimum health and social care”, he stressed.
In regard to the need for staying inside Syria, the Minister of Health explained that the Interim Ministry of Health is an acting and management ministry, manages the health sector for Syrian people to provide sustainable comprehensive health services to all Syrian people wherever they are, and it works to promote the health condition and provide them with treatment and preventative services, equally to all people and at high standard, cooperating with local and international medical bodies.
Dr. al-Joundi revealed that a study for many supportive programmes has been done like: centre of CT scan, magnetic Resonant Imaging (MRI), blood bank, centre of heart surgery and catheterisation, project of medical institutions, the project of the reinforced hospital, a physio-therapy centre and projects to restore the damaged medical centres.
The minister added that a plan to organise and register the medical facilities and medical staff inside the liberated areas, by registering them within medical register, or rehabilitate them and examine their skills to be able to provide them with a proper registration. Added to that, a form to register the medical facilities (clinic, hospitals, health centres) has been adopted.
The Interim Syrian Government is located inside Syria because it is a service and executive body works on building up the country’s institutions through directorates specialised in all sectors in order to enable the Syrian people to stay inside the liberated area and reduce their suffering as much as possible.
Besides the service role, the Interim cabinet has an organisational role to direct resources and build relations with donation bodies and the international community amid lack of local resources and support, and staying inside the country would be the best way to reach to the optimal distribution of resources.
Dr. al-Joundi detailed that the Ministry of Health does not receive any support from any international body, but they support hospital and medical centres directly like the Syrian American Medical Society Foundation (SAMS), Doctors without Borders, Qatari Red Crescent, Turkish Red Crescent, and other humanitarian organisations.
About the medical professionals, Dr. al-Joundi explained that liberated areas suffers of significant shortage of doctors in general and specialists in particular due to targeting medical stations andcentres by the Syrian regime air strikes, which killed many of then and others wounded or became disabled or not able to do their job. He stressed that there is a huge need for heart surgeons, neurosurgeons and eye surgeons, besides specialist of tumours specialists and haematologists, not to forget the need for psychologists, as the psychological disorders and diseases has increased after the war. Many of the people suffer of phobia of the sound of warplanes, compulsive disorder, nocturnal aneurism, nightmares and violence which is spread especially among children, whose games mostly inspired from war and violent scenes they face everyday
