Syria, the cholera epidemic, after 12 years of war, a collapsing health system and the lack of clean water make the situation unlivable

ROME – According to WHO extensionL’World Health Organization, there are 1.3 to 4 million cases of cholera worldwide each year and 21,000 to 143,000 deaths. Cholera is an acute diarrheal disease that can kill within hours if not treated carefully. 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 drinking water becomes an essential condition to prevent its spread, as does access to sanitation.

The first cases of cholera have been recorded in Syria since September last year. In winter, with cold temperatures and wear and tear on the water infrastructure, the situation worsens and cholera spreads more. Furthermore, in the cold, people find it more difficult to reach medical centers, which are few and difficult to reach, increasing the risk of not receiving the right treatment in time. In Syria, the 12 years of conflict, damaged infrastructure, together with the consequences of climate change, especially the drought of recent months, have created conditions that are nothing short of dramatic, thus allowing the epidemic to advance throughout the country. The areas most at risk of spreading cholera are the governorates in the north, on the border with Turkey. But, to date, cases of cholera have been reported in all 14 governorates of the country. The latest figures, updated at the beginning of December, indicate 46,409 suspected cases, including 97 deaths attributed to cholera, with a mortality rate of 0.2%.

90% of people live on $1.90 a day. “Having access to basic necessities is increasingly complicated and clean water is one of them” – says Mattia Leveghi of INTERSOS Syria – 90% of the Syrian population lives below the poverty line, in a crisis that has been going on for almost twelve years and which now sees another danger to people’s lives spreading. Very often, the cause of the lack of drinking water is the lack of maintenance and the consequent wear and tear of the water infrastructures”.

What INTERSOS is doing in Syria. The spread of cholera is the result of a series of factors, including an unstable economy, deep-rooted poverty throughout the territory, a lack of human resources in essential professional sectors such as health care – just think that half of the doctors have left the country in years of crisis, shortage of medicines and medical machinery. The structural incapacity of the national health system to intervene with immediate care – about 40% of hospitals are not functioning or are only partially functioning – has led various humanitarian organizations to work in the field to try to fill this internal void.

The areas where you work. INTERSOS staff is operative in the areas of Damascus, Idlib and Hama in collaboration with the Syrian Arab Crescent: operators are responsible for making communities aware of the nature and danger of the disease, aiming at prevention also through the training of local health personnel. To stop or at least slow down the spread of the epidemic, it is a priority to allow access to drinking water to the entire population. A process to be started both structurally and through knowledge and dissemination of the importance of using uncontaminated water only. In contexts such as the Syrian one, this is a very complex objective which gives humanitarian organizations the task of intervening on a large territorial and sectoral scale. Cholera exists and still today it spreads easily and, even if in Europe we often connect it only to times very distant from us, millions of people are fighting against the disease all over the world.