https://www.cbsnews.com/news/when-hospitals-become-targets-in-syria-civil-war-60-minutes/
Quotes:
Samer Attar: We'd find ourselves doing surgeries, sometimes without anesthesia, on people lying on gurneys in the hallway, because you're just so over-stretched. I remember another child that was brought in. She couldn't have been more than five. Her whole body was pockmarked with shrapnel from her chest to her belly and one of the surgeons in Aleppo, a Syrian surgeon, heroically rushed her to the operating room, and opened up her belly, and stopped the bleeding in her liver. But she had lost so much blood. We can't. You can't give all of your blood to save one life if can you save it to give a little bit each to five who you know will make it. And I saw that all the time.
Scott Pelley: Did that little girl make it?
Samer Attar: That girl? No, she did not. Seeing little bodies wrapped in white shrouds -- with the cloth still bleeding, because the bodies still bleed. They'd be wrapped in white shrouds and just placed outside to be taken to be buried.
__________
__________
Basel Termanini: There have been more than 500 attacks on health care facilities. And we have more than 800 casualties from the staff. So we're trying to move all those facilities underground.
Scott Pelley: Did you say 800 medical professionals have been killed in attacks on hospitals?
Basel Termanini: Yes. More than 800. I think now it's, the latest is 850. There are attacks on hospitals. People are detained, tortured to death. There is shelling also, mostly airstrikes and barrel bombs. This is number one killer for the health staff.
___________
___________
Aleppo's underground hospitals were hard to destroy, so Assad tried to root them out by doubling down on his war crimes. We found two witnesses to this. Dr. Farida who performs cesareans on wounded women and her husband, Dr. Abdulkhalek, an eye surgeon.
Abdulkhalek: They couldn't destroy this building. So, they used a chemical weapon in the last two days of the siege we noticed the smell of chlorine. And we rushed all of the staff, all the patient, to the inner room in that basement. And during this time many children came to our hospital. And we had just one remaining bottle of oxygen. So, we had to transfer the mask between the children, one small amount of oxygen for each other.
No one died in the chlorine attack. But the gas shut down the hospital for a time. Now, more sophisticated underground hospitals are being built by the Syrian American Medical Society. In the countryside, they're excavating a cave to replace a regional hospital that serves more than 200,000 people.
____________
____________
Tamer Ghanem: One of the most important things is the face, is how people identify themselves. But there are also functional aspects to that things like being able to open your mouth so you can get a spoon inside your mouth so you can feed yourself.
Scott Pelley: What can you do for these people?
Tamer Ghanem: It's very rare that one surgery would fix everything. Some of the surgeries I cannot do here just because of limitation of the equipment. Some of these injuries are so horrific that, really, you're not able to rebuild the face back again with the tissues that that patient has.
Scott Pelley: It must be frustrating for you to see these patients in so desperate a need and you not being able to help them.
Tamer Ghanem: Yes, it's very hard. Absolutely.
Scott Pelley: Especially the children.
Tamer Ghanem: Especially, I have my own children, and it's very difficult to see children you know, with those injuries and their parents and how that affects them.
_____________
_____________
The Syrian American Medical Society says that, over seven years of war, it has delivered 100,000 babies and supported almost 400,000 surgeries.
Scott Pelley: Why risk your life for this?
Samer Attar: Well, the Syrian nurses, and the doctors, the rescue workers that I met, told me that they would rather risk their lives dying in Syria trying to save lives than grow old comfortably from a distance watching the world fall apart. And I thought 20 years from now, I didn't want to look back and say that I wasn't a part of that.
The war against the hospitals is designed to break the will of the rebellion. But as long as some will fight for mercy, there is reason for all to hope.
