A Jesuit in Aleppo has warned that conditions in Syria are “like Gaza without the headlines”.
The Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) says that it will soon lack the funds to pay for life-saving operations in Syria.
Fr Tony O’Riordan SJ said the JRS helps “thousands of people access surgery.” He told The Tablet: “One recent example was a 14-year-old needing surgery for a brain tumour. She recently came up to me with a smile.”
As early as May, all JRS funding for vital operations including for cancer and open-heart surgery is due to expire.
Fr O’Riordan said: “The two public hospitals in Aleppo are depleted of doctors and resources. They can only perform open heart surgery once a week but some weeks, the life-saving equipment is broken.”
He continued: “People sell jewellery, furniture, and their cars to help their loved ones. In public hospitals you might have to pay for your hospital beds or drugs.”
He emphasised this was only one symptom “of a worsening situation” neglected by the international community.
“Syria has been forgotten. It is like Gaza without the headlines.”
The are now 16 million Syrians in need of humanitarian aid. On 1 January, the UN World Food Programme stopped supplying food to Syria, where every month 360 JRS volunteers distribute food baskets including rice, pulses, wheatgerm flour, sugar, and olive oil. On three occasions, the JRS has fed 50,000 Syrians.
With 90 per cent of Syrians living in poverty, “basic medicine, rent and shelter are out of reach for many”, said Fr O’Riordan.
He is one of 180 JRS volunteers in Aleppo. They operate three centres which offer basic medical care, and recently gave winter jackets, trousers, and underclothes to 2,000 children whose families lost their homes in the earthquakes of February 2023.
Around 55,000 people died after tremors measuring 7.5-7.8 on the Richter scale struck Turkey and Syria.
Up to 15 people (usually from two families) are now cramming into two-room homes in eastern Aleppo, said Fr O’Riordan. There is no clean water. Electricity is scarce.
“Most of Syria has four or five hours supply on a good day, unless you can afford a generator,” he said. “On other days, you’ll have electricity for two or three days if you are lucky.”
For 14 years, Syrians have endured a conflict which, if now sporadic, continues today.
“People suffer all the time,” said Fr O’Riordan. He praised Syrians for managing, while “living in the deepest level of hell”, to show one another “remarkable resilience and kindness.”
“They even welcome a stranger like me,” he added. The Cork-born Fr O’Riordan arrived in Syria three years ago, after a spell in the Sudan.
The Aleppo centres have now begun to accompany 60 children and 300 adults who lost family in the earthquake.
“One of the things JRS does best is to accompany people spiritually and emotionally,” said Fr O’Riordan. “This probably the greatest gift we can give people.”
Providing a safe place for Syrians to talk about their experience “is what enables them to face today or tomorrow. They’ll say: ‘I’ve haven’t been treated like this for a while – having people sit down and listen to me.’”
Fr O’Riordan appealed for contributions to the JRS in Syria during Lent. Supporters can contact the service through the Irish Jesuits International website: www.iji.ie.
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