Syria loses a lifeline as the United States and Europe slash global aid

Yekiti Media

The fall of Syria’s dictatorship last year brought the end of a long and bloody civil conflict — but no quick relief to millions of Syrians living in the war-shattered nation.

The country’s health care network lay in ruins. Nongovernmental organizations filled some of the gap in health services, often with funding from the United States or Europe, but now that lifeline, too, is disappearing.

The United States — Syria’s largest donor, having provided more than $18 billion in assistance during the country’s 14-year war — has frozen all its foreign aid programs. The Trump administration dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development.

The U.S. cuts, along with shrinking contributions from European governments, have been “catastrophic” for health care, particularly in northern Syria, where millions who were displaced by the conflict have settled, said Michèle Colombel of Mehad, a French nongovernmental organization that manages more than two dozen health centers there.

Mehad did not receive assistance directly from the United States. But it was feeling the effects as NGO partners lost funding and closed their clinics, leaving patients to flood Mehad facilities and the organization to compete for increasingly scarce aid.

As the money dries up, the peril to Syrians is rising. Workers at Mehad have counted 20 cases of severe acute malnutrition over the past three months in the Azaz area, north of Aleppo. The group has run out of the nutritional baby food known as Plumpy’Nut, ordinarily supplied by Save the Children, which said in April that funding cuts had forced it to close 40 percent of its nutrition programs in Syria.

“More than 416,000 children in Syria are now at significant risk of severe malnutrition following the sudden suspension of foreign aid,” Save the
Children said at the time.

Several of Mehad’s projects in northern Syria have also been shuttered or are scheduled to close. They included primary-care health facilities, programs for mothers and their children and a nutrition distribution program.

In the northwestern town of Kafar Takharim, Mehad three months ago was providing services to about a third of the mothers and infants, according to local staff. But other NGOs have since stopped operating, and Mehad now serves most of the town’s mothers.

Across northwest Syria, health workers warned in May, “172 health facilities are at risk of closure due to abrupt funding cuts — potentially leaving 4.24 million people without reliable access to trauma care, maternal and child health, and chronic disease treatment.” In northeast Syria, they said in a bulletin published by the World Health Organization-led Health Cluster, “23 facilities are already suspended, and another 68 are at risk of shutting down.”

As facilities close, those that remain open are seeing more patients. Staff at the Al Kesra hospital said their caseload crept up by about 10 percent over the past five months. But the hospital closed a wing that provided services to malnourished babies in April because the organization that supported it lost its USAID funding, they said.

Hassan Al Ali, a coordinator at Al Kesra, said three children whose malnutrition care was interrupted developed complications and were brought by their parents back to the hospital.

Mohammed al Hussein, 37, a data entry officer and warehouse manager, searches through hospital supplies in the storeroom at the dialysis center in Abu Hamam Hospital in Deir Ez-Zur, Syria. (Ed Ram/Getty Images)

A man waits for a child to receive an injection from Hussein Altadena, 33, an emergency nurse, right, in an emergency treatment room in Abu Hamam Hospital. (Ed Ram/Getty Images)

Nurse Ahmed Jolan, 35, treats a patient at the Mehad-run dialysis center, one of the few centers left after U.S. funding cuts. (Ed Ram/Getty Images)
Syrians with kidney ailments also face growing peril.

Three dialysis centers operated by Mehad are now the only functioning centers in northeast Syria, the group said. Medical staff at the Abu Hamam Hospital say that in the past five months they’ve had to turn away some patients requiring dialysis. Some dialysis machines there are starting to break down, hospital nephrologist Ahmad Aswaad said, putting stress on machines that still function.

The loss of centers could force patients to search for options farther away, entailing journeys many cannot afford, or to rely on private clinics, also at prohibitive expense.

If the aid cuts worsen, Aswaad said, “it’s going to be a big problem. … Some patients will die.

washington post/ By Ed Ram and Kareem Fahim