The Syria Response Coordinators team has documented two deaths of children due to cold and respiratory diseases caused by materials that are not suitable for heating, over the past 24 hours. They talked about difficulties in securing respirators for children, especially with the cessation of support for more than 18 medical facilities.
Two-month-old Amina Mohammed Salameh arrived in poor condition at al-Rahman Specialist Hospital, as a result of severe cold and bradycardia with cyanosis. She was given immediate aid and placed under observation, but efforts to resuscitate the girl, who suffered from pulmonary hemorrhage and respiratory depression, failed. Her condition was diagnosed as “severe hypothermia.”
The hospital’s second report indicates that seven-day-old Fatima al-Mahmoud arrived dead at 2 a.m. She was suffering from cold limbs and dilated pupils that were not responding, in addition to signs of bleeding from the nose and mouth.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said the babies whose deaths were reported on Tuesday had been staying in camps in the al-Ziyara and al-Sheikh Bahr areas, north of Idlib city.
The UK-based monitoring group added that a one-month-old baby boy had also died due to the cold at a camp in Jarablus, in neighbouring Aleppo province, on January 23.
Another child was killed in the Qastal Miqdad area on January 18 after snow caused the roof of their tent to collapse.
Some 2.8 million people have sought shelter in the opposition stronghold after fleeing their homes during the country’s decade-long civil war. Many live in worn-out tents without warm clothes and fuel for heating.
The UN has warned that the situation is getting worse due to a severe economic downturn in Syria that has seen food prices double in a year, as well as a shortage of funding to provide winter aid and increased needs.
It said 287 camps for displaced people in Idlib and Aleppo have been affected by snowfalls, flooding and strong winds as a result of storms that battered the region on January 18, 19 and 25. The snow has destroyed at least 935 tents and damaged more than 9,500 others.
The UN said there had also been 68 fires at camps since the beginning of the year, which had killed two people and injured 24 others. Most of the blazes were sparked by heating stoves.
