The Turkish Red Crescent has opened mobile clinics for Syrian people in Azaz over the weekend to address the needs of people living in hard-to-reach areas.
The mobile clinics will tour around in the territories liberated by Turkish forces in Operation Euphrates Shield and Operation Olive Branch. Mobile clinics are aimed to provide health services including eye, dental, internal medicine, radiology, pediatrics, bloodletting and laboratory services to civilians in camps and in areas where there is difficulty in delivering health services.
Speaking in the opening ceremony, Kerem Kınık, the president of Red Crescent, underlined that due to the civil war, the health system of the country has long collapsed and hundreds of people need treatment.
"With the support of our friends from Qatar, approximately 500 people per day will have the opportunity to benefit from health services offered by our specialist physicians in various areas including x-ray, laboratory, dental and eye," Kınık said.
Touching upon the current situation of the health system in Syria, Kınık stressed that 80 public hospitals out of 90 are deserted or unusable while the number of doctors has decreased from 31,000 to 5,000 since the beginning of the civil war despite the mounting need for medicine and hospitals in the country.
According to Kınık, in a bid to address these problems, the organization and the Ministry of Health set up 34 hospitals and health centers in Syria and tasked 2,152 health personnel including about 400 doctors and 800 nurses in these facilities. The Turkish Red Crescent has been providing humanitarian aid including food, tents, and blankets for the victims of war since 2011 when the civil war began. In 2018, the Red Crescent sent 100,000 tents to Syria, enabling 1 million Syrians to have shelters. The organization also formed 30 camps in northern Syria, where 150,000 people live. In addition to setting up camps, the organization helps with the reconstruction of the war-torn cities by establishing educational, sports and health facilities.
