Reports | 25 05 2020
Cancer is the third cause for death in Syria, with 17.000 new cancer cases recorded in Syria every year, and it is one of the most costly medical conditions in terms of treatment and patient care.
Nowadays with the acute shortage of health services, as a result of the ongoing conflict in the country, thousands of patients are left without treatment, especially that medical relief is focused mainly on emergency cases and war injuries .
Cancer patients in the besieged Syrian towns and cities, especially Eastern Ghouta, are suffering the most in this humanitarian disaster with the absence of their basic needs such as food and medicine. The cost of treatment per patient is between one to sixty thousand U.S. dollars. Therefore, a group of doctors and activists have opened the Mercy Centre to treat cancer patients for free.
Dr. Wisam, one of the project supervisors, said “This centre has become a necessity in the light of the deteriorating situation in the besieged areas. Cancer patients cannot go to the government treatment centres, and the private ones are very costly.” Dr. Wisam added that the number of patients treated in the centre since its opening six months ago is about two hundred patients.
According to Dr. Wisam, there has been a sharp increase in the number of new patients recently. She believes the main reason behind this increase is malnutrition, in addition to the dire social , environmental and psychological situation in Syria and especially in the besieged areas. The centre offers only chemotherapy since it does not have the ability to offer radiation therapy or other forms of advanced treatment. It provides also lab tests and health care during and after chemotherapy sessions despite its modest resources.
The centre, which has two separate sections for men and women, consists of a clinic, a clinical laboratory, radiotherapy department, dissection laboratory. Yet, the centre still needs a lot of equipments such as an MRI. In addition, they do not have enough resources to run certain medical tests. On top of all of that they are suffering from the continuous power outage.
Lack of funds is the biggest problem for the centre now; especially with many of their supporters opting to donate to war casualties rather than patients with critical conditions and diminishing chances of survival. Ghada, the centre PR manager, told us their funding comes mainly from individuals, in addition to one armed group that has bought and delivered the medication used in the centre.
She adds that the cost of treating patients reached four million SYP per month, yet they could not find an organization or political entity willing to adopt and fund their centre due to its high running costs.