Following the fall of Syria’s regime, NHS doctors of the Syrian diaspora are pitching in on the ground to help treat liberated political prisoners. Sally Howard reports
On 20 December Dr Ghanem Tayara, an NHS GP, will fly home. Dr Tayara has lived in the UK for 29 years, but this is the first time the Redditch-based, Syrian-born GP has visited his native Syria since 2013. That was when he was added to a list of exiled Syrians who would be arrested at the border by Shu’bat al-Mukhabarat al-‘Askariyya, the military intelligence service that propped up the notorious Ba’athist regime of dictator Bashar al-Assad.
In the years since his departure, Dr Tayara’s Syrian home has been seized by the Ba’ath Party, and his wider family were forced to flee to Lebanon, where his father died in 2015.
‘I haven’t seen my house or my parent’s house, my home city or home nation since 2013,’ he told Pulse. ‘It will be an emotional time.’
On 8 December, Ba’athist Syria, led by President Bashar al-Assad, collapsed during a major offensive by opposition forces led by rebels under the command of the group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and its leader Abu Muhammad al-Jawlani.
In the days that followed, scenes reminiscent of the liberation of World War II concentration camps unfolded at the evacuation of Assad’s network of military prisons. Among the detainees released from the most notorious of these, Saydnaya Military Prison 30km north of Syrian capital Damascus, was Abdel Wahab Daadoush. Daadoush is a medical student who had been ‘disappeared’ by the Arab Socialist Ba’ath party’s dictatorial regime in 2011 while on his way to take a medical exam in the city Hama. He emerged from Saydnaya emaciated, suffering memory loss and not able to identify himself.
Healthcare workers were deliberately targeted by Assad’s regime in his 13 years in power, for political activism or simply for providing care to civilians injured in the war. According to NGO Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) 949 medical professionals were killed in the nation from 2011 to March 2024, with ‘at least 88%’ of these deaths attributable to al Assad’s Syrian government forces and their Russian allies. 1,100 health care providers, the NGO claims, who were detained and forcibly disappeared by the Assad regime remain unaccounted for. Around 70% of healthcare professionals have fled the country in the past decade due to these violent reprisals, in the hope of seeking a safer life elsewhere. Many headed to northern European countries or the Gulf States.
Some of these exiled doctors, such as Dr Tayara, have become aid workers and activists from afar, founding and fundraising for organisations such as The Syrian British Medical Society (SBMS), which provides medical aid, equipment, and medicines to Syria, and Union of Medical Care and Relief Organizations (UOSSM), a doctor-led organisation that provides aid and mobile clinics in Syria, Ukraine and Gaza. Dr Tayara was one of the founders of UOSSM and his visit to Syria is to meet the new heads of the directorates in cities Homs, Damascus, and Sueda to assess the population’s healthcare needs.
Dr Tayara anticipates high levels of unmet need for surgical care for war injuries, pediatric care and mental health support for trauma. He tells Pulse that he is also expecting a skills gap for remaining medics who have had no updates in their training for 14 years. Before the worsening of the civil war, the Syrian British Medical Society provided training courses for Syrian medical professionals, on topics including advanced life support and trauma support.
At a media briefing on 10 December, World Health Organisation (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that less than two-thirds of hospitals and primary care facilities are functional in Syria and that almost 15 million people are in need of urgent access to trauma and surgical care, treatment for noncommunicable diseases, maternal and child care and mental health support.
WHO teams are on the ground in Syria, he added, to assess the scope of health needs, and to strengthen disease surveillance systems, as the risk of outbreaks, including cholera, is high.
Dr Mohamed Najjar, a Syrian GP who works in Acton, West London, was also blacklisted by Syrian intelligence forces; his trip to his native Aleppo in January will be his first time in Syria in over a decade. Dr Najjar has been involved in medical aid in exile for charities Syria Relief, Islamic Relief and Palmyra Relief, including arranging for the collection and shipment of used or nearly expired NHS wheelchairs, crutches, and medicines to Syria, and stomas for cancer patients who have undergone hemicolectomy procedures. He has ‘regularly tapped the expertise of NHS colleagues to advise doctor counterparts in Syria.
The Syrian Civil War has had a devastating impact on the mental health of the Syrian population, with a high prevalence of mental health disorders including depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Dr Karim Aljian, an NHS hospital doctor, and his father Ahmad Aljian, a consultant psychiatrist working for the NHS, are responding to this need by launching an Arabic language tele counselling service, initially targeting torture victims who are bring released from prison. Dr Aljian was motivated to train as a doctor by the case of Dr Abbas Khan, a British orthopaedic surgeon who was tortured and killed in 2013 while imprisoned by the Syrian government (Dr Alijan is pictured above with an photo of Dr Khan.)
‘The old regime is gone and for the first time in 54 years, Syrians feel Syria is being run by us Syrians,’ Dr Aljian told Pulse of the regime change in his native Syria. ‘Now we need to rebuild and put the past behind us.’
Dr Tayara believes that Syria’s tens of thousands of doctors in exile will be wary about returning home on a permanent basis until it’s clear that the new regime will usher in a period of stability. ‘Initially doctors overseas will provide training and support, and will go home for voluntary stints, rather than leaving behind stable jobs in the UK, Germany or the Gulf,’ he predicts. He adds: ‘My hope is that the new regime in Syria is honest and transparent and seeks freedom for all Syrians regardless of their religion, beliefs or ethnicity.’
Dr Najjar now feels that Britain is his home. However he also hopes to ‘roll up my sleeves’ and be part of rebuilding Syrian society. ‘It has been a hard time for us all, but now there is hope,’ he says.
Anyone who wishes to donate to the Doctors Without Borders efforts in Syria can do so here
