Tragedy Strikes as Nurse Loses Family in Devastating Syria Earthquake

 Khalil, a nurse anesthetist, was formerly at work when the 7.8- magnitude earthquake rocked Turkey and Syria last week, leveling entire neighborhoods and leaving a combined death count of further than 35,000, including at least, 3581 in Syria.

While his woman and two daughters lay under the debris after Syria's earthquake, Abdelbaset Khalil tended to hundreds of cases who swamped into his sanitorium.

Khalil, a nurse anesthetist, was formerly at work when the 7.8- magnitude earthquake rocked Turkey and Syria last week, leveling entire neighborhoods and leaving a combined death count of further than35, 000, including at least, 3581 in Syria.

As the earthquake shook the ground beneath him, he rushed out of the sanitorium to find his apartment structure had collapsed with his family outdoors.

Speechless and overwhelmed, the 50- time-old walked back to the sanitorium ward to an endless flux of cases and victims' bodies, including those of the sanitorium's administrative director and head nurse.

" I was tending to people in the sanitorium while my woman and son were under the debris," Khalil told AFP in the municipality of Harim in the revolutionary- held Idlib terrain on the border with Turkey.

" I could not do anything" to save his woman or daughters, he continued.

He carried on working through his grief, scrabbling to help the innumerable wounded with numerous supplies and stingy means.

The first day was" extremely trying and truly hard", said Khalil." It passed like 50 times."

On Wednesday, the bodies of his family members were recovered, leaving him dozer and with a sense of" total helplessness", he said as he flipped through the cinema of them on his phone.

His only solace was that he buried them in their motherland.

" I will always be suitable to visit."

-' Catastrophic'-

Shortly after the earthquake, ambulances rushed to Harim sanitorium which was snappily submersed with cases.

" It's a field sanitorium with a modest and simple outfit," said general surgeon Mohamed al-Badr.

" It could accommodate no further than 30 cases."

He said the sanitorium was originally erected to treat the wounded of Syria's long-running conflict, which broke out nearly 12 times agone.

" The situation was formerly so delicate that cases were constantly sleeping on the bottoms and in corridors."

Since Monday's disaster, the sanitorium has entered about,2500 wounded, of whom 390 failed, according to orthopedic surgeon Hassan al- Hamdo.

" Multiple cases demanded a CT scan but they aren't available anywhere in the region," said Hamdo.

supplies have been slow to arrive in war-torn Syria, where times of conflict have destroyed the healthcare system, especially in the revolutionary- held areas in the country's northwest.

In a Friday report, the International Rescue Committee advised of a public health breakdown in northwest Syria.

" installations are now running low on critical medical supplies analogous as serums, reek videotapes, anodynes, medical plasters and blood bags," it said.

Other critical conditions include energy for generators and burial bags, it added, warning of worsening conditions due to the harsh downfall and" nipping temperatures".

" Unless we get farther backing, supplies, and unrestricted humanitarian access urgently the results could be disastrous," it said.

- Calls for aid-

In the border megacity of Salqin, Hassan Joulak, a specialist in orthopedic surgery, said his sanitorium was treating between 800 and,1000 injured people, the ultimate of them with bone fractures.

" Fifteen beats after the earthquake, the wounded began to arrive in large numbers, overwhelming the sanitorium's capacity," he said.

The challenges are not limited to revolutionary- held areas, as indeed in the governance- the controlled corridor of Syria hospitals are critically short of professed croakers and proper outfits.

" nearly 50 percent of healthcare installations are not performing," according to Ahmed Al- Mandhari, the World Health Organization's indigenous director for the eastern Mediterranean.

" Those which are performing are lacking outfit, lacking staff, lacking specifics."

On Sunday, the United Nations denounced the failure to deliver desperately demanded aid to Syria.

In the government-held coastal municipality of Jableh, five croakers were killed in the disaster and the municipality's only sanitorium was severely damaged, according to sanitorium head Mohamed al-Khalil.

Despite the lack of aid and its limited capacity, the sanitorium continues to operate, indeed as multitudinous croakers" lost their homes", he said.