Cases of cholera have been reported in all 14 governorates of the country. Twelve years of conflict, a collapsing healthcare system, and a lack of uncontaminated water make the situation alarming
According to the WHO, the World Health Organization, 1.3 to 4 million cases of cholera are reported each year in the world, and 21,000 to 143,000 deaths. Cholera is an acute diarrheal disease that can kill within hours if not treated thoroughly. Symptoms can occur 12 hours to 5 days after ingesting contaminated food or water. It is a disease that affects both children and adults and can be fatal. Access to clean water becomes essential to prevent its spread, as does access to sanitation.
Since September, the first cases of cholera have been recorded in Syria. In winter, with the cold temperatures and the usury of water infrastructure, the situation worsens and cholera spreads more. Moreover, with the wintry weather, people take more effort to reach medical centers, which are few and hard to reach, increasing the risk of not getting the right treatment in time. In Syria, several years of conflict, and damaged infrastructure, combined with the consequences of climate change, particularly the drought of recent months, have created dramatic conditions, increasing the epidemic risk in the country. The areas most at risk of spreading the epidemic are the governorates in the north, bordering Turkey. But, currently, cases of cholera have been reported in all 14 governorates of the country. The latest data, updated in early December, report 46,409 suspected cases, including 97 deaths attributed to cholera, with a death rate of 0.2%.
“Having access to necessities is increasingly complicated, and clean water is one of them,” says Mattia Leveghi of INTERSOS Syria, “90% of the Syrian population is living below the poverty line, in a crisis that has been going on for almost 12 years and now sees another danger to people’s lives spreading. Very often, the cause of drinking water shortages is the lack of maintenance and subsequent the usury of water infrastructure.”.
What INTERSOS is doing in Syria
The spread of cholera is the result of several factors, including an unstable economy, entrenched poverty throughout the country, and a shortage of human resources in essential professional sectors such as health care – suffice it to say that half of the doctors left the country in the crisis years, shortage of medicines and medical machinery. The structural inability of the national health system to intervene with immediate care-about 40% of hospitals are not functioning or only partially functioning-has led several humanitarian organizations to work on the ground to try to fill this internal gap.
INTERSOS staff is operating in the Damascus, Idlib, and Hama areas in collaboration with the Syrian Arab Red Crescent: workers are responsible for raising awareness among communities about the nature and danger of the disease, also aiming at prevention by training local health personnel. To halt or at least slow the spread of the epidemic, it is a priority to provide access to clean water to the entire population. A process to be initiated both structurally and through knowledge and dissemination of the importance of using only uncontaminated water. In contexts such as Syria, this is a complex objective that hands humanitarian organizations the task of intervening on a large territorial and sectoral scale. Cholera exists and still spreads easily, and although in Europe we often link it only to eras far removed from us, millions of people are struggling with the disease worldwide.