Medical evacuations begin in besieged Syrian suburb, but doctor says hundreds still trapped

Story transcript

At least 28 critically ill Syriansarebeing transported to Damascus fromthe rebel-held suburb of Eastern Ghouta.

But that's just a handful of the hundreds of people who need urgent medical attention in the besieged area, says Dr. Mohamad Katoub.

A deal between Damascus and a rebel factionallowed an aid agencyto evacuate a handful of critically illpatients from the enclave the only major strongholdof anti-governmentforces near the capital.

• Urgent medical evacuations begin in Eastern Ghouta
• AS IT HAPPENS: Doctors fear more children will starve in Ghouta

Katoub, a doctor with the Syrian American Medical Society Association, is helping to organize the evacuation. He spoke withAs It Happens guest host Helen Mann. Here's part of their conversation.

What kind of conditions have some of these evacuees been living with in recent times?

Those evacuees have been seeking medical evacuation outside of Ghouta since months now because they don't have the treatment that they need because of the siege.

The scope of services that we can provide in this area is shrinking day by day.

Now we have a list of 641 people who need to be treated outside of Ghouta.

So you are dealing with, at this point, 29 people who are to be brought out for medical care. How do you make the choice as to who stays behind?

This list was prepared two months ago when ... the number of people who needed medical evacuation was much less than now. At that time, a discussion with the UN and other stakeholders in the area took place and finally we could have an agreement that the very urgent cases should be evacuated.

The local staff made the evaluation considering this limited number and they preferred only to put on the list people who definitely would survive if they are out.

We submitted this list two months ago to the UN, but the UN couldn't get the approval from the Syrian government.

During this time, the conditions are completely different; we have much bigger number of people who need evacuation.

Eighteen people died awaiting the medical evacuation. One of them is from this short list of 29.

That's the baby that you tweeted out. You had hoped to bring that baby out and the child died..

This morning, the local staff reached her family to tell them the good news that finally we [got] the approval for your child to be out, but the family told us that the girl died a few days ago before the approval happened.

This girl could survive two months ago if she was evacuated.

So now you have these 28 people that you are getting out. Can you tell us about a few of them?

Eighteen of them are children. Many of them have heart defects. Others have cancer. We have one case of a rare disease.

We have leukemia cases. We have patients with kidney transplants where they need specific medicines and they need advanced treatments.

All of those cannot be treated in Ghouta, unfortunately, either because of lack of capacity or lack of medicines.

Why are you only able to get so few out at this point?

The Syrian government [doesn't] allow us to evacuate those people to the capital Damascus, which is only 10 kilometres away, to treat the patients.

Will you try to add another person now that the baby has died?

There are some negotiations about adding another patient so we will have the 29 spaces.

Also, there are four patients who received confirmation from the International Committee of the Red Cross that they couldn't get the security clearance from the Syrian government for them. Sothose four patients are concerned about being evacuated to government area.

So those four people are scared if they go to Damascus, that they may be captured by the Syrian government.

There is previous experience where one of the family members of the evacuees was arrested, so people are scared to face the same conditions.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. To hear the full interview with MohamadKatoub, listen in the player above.