A recent medical mission from Germany likely saved Mohammed Qanbat’s life.
The 55-year-old from the Syrian city of Hama had open-heart surgery in April. The procedure rarely undertaken in these days because the health system deteriorated so much during the country’s 14-year civil war and because it’s so expensive.
But recently, Syrian doctors visiting from Germany included Qanbat on their list of most-needy patients.
“I can’t express how happy and grateful I am,” Qanbat told DW.
“It’s beyond words. We have waited so long for our children to come and help us,” he said, referring to the fact that many Syrians fled their country during the war. “But they have not forgotten us. They returned to help us.”
According to the World Bank, around 30,000 physicians served the Syrian population in 2010, a year before the 2011 uprising that led to the civil war. In 2020, the only year the UN collected data, less than 16,000 remained, with thousands of physicians leaving the country. Other medical personnel like nurses, pharmacists and dentists also fled.
Many ended up in Germany. Statistics indicate just over 6,000 Syrian doctors work in Germany, mostly in hospitals, but those are just the doctors who hold Syrian passports. In fact, there could be more than 10,000 Syrian doctors in Germany. It’s just that many now hold German passports, so they are not counted as foreign staffers.
First mission in Syria
After the ouster of Syrian dictator in early December last year, a number of those Syrian doctors came together to found the Syrian German Medical Association, or SGMA. It all started with a small WhatsApp group of doctors wondering how they could help, explains Nour Hazzouri, a senior physician specializing in gastroenterology who works at Helios Hospital in Krefeld, western Germany.
He told DW that the WhatsApp group became a Facebook page, and then, in mid-January, SGMA was officially founded. It now has around 500 members. “Even we’ve been really surprised how quickly it has grown,” Hazzouri noted.
This month, SGMA members undertook their first mission home. Since early April, around 85 Syrian doctors from SGMA have been in Syria giving educational lectures, assessing the state of Syria’s healthcare system and performing surgeries around the country.
One challenge has been outdated equipment in Syrian hospitals, Ayman Sodah, a senior physician and cardiologist at the Rhön Klinikum in Bad Neustadt, Bavaria, told Al Jazeera as he emerged the operating theatre in Hama.
“It’s clear that during [the past] 15 years, nothing has been renewed,” he said.
“Before the war, Syria was a middle-income country with relatively good health indicators,” the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think tank, previously reported. But during the war, the Assad regime and its . due to sanctions and an ailing economy.
Nobody was talking about that last Sunday in a hall in Syria’s capital, Damascus. Around 300 people, including curious medical students, local authorities and civil society organizations, gathered to hear an SGMA delegation talk, the mood hopeful and optimistic.
“I’m feeling pretty excited,” Mustafa Fahham, a senior doctor in the nephrology and dialysis department at Bremerhaven Hospital, northern Germany, told DW in Damascus. “Every Syrian had, at the back of their minds, a fear that was connected with Assad. Now that fear is gone. So I’m feeling good, and I am happy to be here in Damascus, where I’m able to finally help support the Syrian health system.”
“The idea for this recent mission during the [Easter and Ramadan] holidays came about because many doctors wanted to visit their families in Syria, some of whom they hadn’t seen for 14 years,” Hazzouri, the Krefeld physician, explains. “This then sparked the idea of using this time to provide medical assistance, too.”
The mission began with an online questionnaire, and within a week, over 80 volunteers had signed up.
Hazzouri conceded that security is still an issue in some parts of Syria, so the doctors couldn’t work everywhere. “But the biggest challenge really was the cost of materials,” he said.
Helpful partnerships
The Syrian volunteers funded most of the trip themselves, paying for travel and raising money for medical equipment, Hazzouri told DW.
“Many brought donations from their clinics. At the same time, we launched an online fundraising campaign, through which we were able to raise almost €100,000 within a month, mostly from Syrian doctors in Germany. Local Syrian NGOs also supported us with donations of materials.”
So far, there’s been no official support from the . However, SGMA members did attend the mid-February conference on German-Syrian hospital alliances, which Hazzouri described as “an important step in the direction of a potential partnership.”
The Ministry of Health in Syria has also been helpful, providing permits for SGMA doctors to work. , neurosurgeon Musab al-Ali, also previously worked in Germany and was involved with the Syrian Community in Germany (SGD), an advocacy organization. He also previously volunteered on trips home.
Another medical aid campaign that also launched this month in Syria, “Shifa, Hand in Hand for Syria,” is more directly linked to the SGD and the Syrian Ministry of Health. Around 100 Syrian doctors are involved with this too.
At home in Syria or Germany?
Most of SGMA’s medical volunteers will return to their jobs in Germany. However, a recent survey by the Syrian Association for Doctors and Pharmacists in Germany found that 76% of their members were considering returning home permanently.
In recent interviews with German media, Syrian doctors regularly express concerns about increased and , as well as how difficult some have found it to be fully accepted in Germany.
Their departures would have a detrimental impact on Germany’s health services. Even though Syrian doctors only emake up 2% of all doctors in Germany, they play a far bigger role in understaffed hospitals and clinics in eastern Germany.
“We do consider Germany, and of course, not all the doctors would leave at once,” Fahham, the Bremerhaven Hospital doctor, told DW in Damascus. “On the other hand, we also feel loyalty to Syria. But I believe we can come up with some sort of plan where we can help here, and German healthcare is also covered.”
In fact, SGMA’s lectures in Syria were not just on medical updates. Some were also to advise medical students or doctors who might want to work in Germany, said Muaz al-Moarawi, a doctor working in Gelsenkirchen who was in Damascus for the SGMA.
“Syria needs a lot of help right now to rebuild its healthcare. But Germany also needs Syrian doctors and medical personnel,” al-Moarawi told DW. “What we want is to be a bridge between Syria and Germany, a bridge both sides can profit from.”
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