Around 55 tonnes of EU-funded medical supplies arrived in northwestern Syria from Türkiye on Thursday, according to a U.N. health official.
As part of an EU air bridge to Syria, the supplies crossed Türkiye's Cilvegozu border post and were transported to a warehouse in Idlib, a city in the northwest, said Mrinalini Santhanam of the World Health Organization.
"There's one more air bridge planned for February," she told Agence France-Presse (AFP), adding that it was "still in the planning stages," with talks "to determine the volume and scale."
The supplies, which will be distributed to health care centers in Idlib and the Aleppo region, are part of an EU humanitarian bridge announced by Brussels on Dec. 13.
The aim is to support Syria's battered health care system following the ouster of Bashar al-Assad by rebels on Dec. 8.
Included in the shipment were 8,000 emergency surgical kits, anesthetic supplies, IV fluids, sterilization materials, and medications to prevent disease outbreaks, the WHO said.
The civil war, which broke out in 2011, devastated Syria's health care system, with "almost half of the hospitals (there) not functional," WHO planning analyst Lorenzo Dal Monte told AFP in late December.
He said the 50-tonne shipment from Dubai included "mainly trauma and surgical kits."
Another five tonnes of supplies were brought in from another stockpile in Denmark, including emergency health kits, winter clothing, and water purification tablets, the WHO said.
