A SYRIAN refugee doctor who has been on the frontline against coronavirus in Aberdeen has made an emotional plea for Scots to help the millions now at risk from the disease in Syria and around the world.

Dr Ahmed Subeh fled Damascus at the height of the Syria’s conflict, leaving his wife and parents to take his chance as a refugee in Europe.

He risked his life travelling through Lebanon and Turkey before joining a small boat crammed with 45 refugees to Samos in Greece. He then managed to get onto two different flights, first to Paris and then from Italy onto Edinburgh Airport where he claimed asylum in 2015.

After being housed in Glasgow he then put his mind to learning better English and completing his medical studies to be a doctor in Scotland – then successfully gained a job at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary two years ago.

He has been reunited with his wife, Dana and they now live happily in Scotland with their baby son, Nabeel, who will celebrate his first birthday this week. However, many of his family and friends are still in Syria and he is worried about the impact of the pandemic there now.

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He is now speaking to the media to make an urgent call to the Scottish and British public to back the Disasters Emergency Committee appeal to help millions of people still caught up in the civil war in northwest Syria and now having to face the deadly threat of coronavirus without any adequate medical care.

Dr Subeh said: “The health system in Syria cannot deal with this sort of pandemic, it is deprived of medical staffing, with numbers infected rising daily, doctors risk catching the virus and then passing it back to patients. Living in camps or in tents, it is really difficult to self-isolate, there aren’t enough intensive care beds, it is a really critical situation.”

Thanking people who have donated to the DEC appeal, he added: “Thinking outside your bubble during a pandemic, to not only help yourself but help others is very kind and generous. This is really important. I’m most certain this will help many, many people and it will save lives as well.”

But of his time working the pandemic frontline here in Scotland at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary, Dr Subeh, like many doctors he was understated.

“The stress was everywhere at the beginning, less stressful than Syria but stressful in its own way. We were scared of getting the virus especially at first when I had to perform CPR on a patient without a full PPE mask, but it quickly got better. You just have to take a deep breath and try to work things through and it turned out well eventually.”

Syrian terror
Syria is in its 10th year of a civil war which has killed at least 224,000 civilians, 29,000 of them children. An estimated 11.1 million people need humanitarian assistance. The UN has called for an immediate countrywide ceasefire to allow an unrestricted response to the Covid-19 outbreak.

The Syrian conflict triggered 1.8 million new displacements in 2019, mostly the result of military offensives in the northeast and northwest of the country. Around 6.5 million people were living in internal displacement camps as of the end of that year. Many now live in tents in crowded camps on the border with Turkey with only basic facilities.

Of the 111 public hospitals in Syria, only half are fully functioning. There is a huge shortage with staff with 70% of health workers, like Dr Subeh, having already left the country.

There are also shortages of ventilators, sterilisation equipment and personal protective equipment (PPE).

Syria also faces a severe food crisis, partly as a result of the Covid-19 crisis. The World Food Programme says there is a risk of mass starvation in the country: “We’ve got people on the brink of starvation now, and they can’t wait. People will die, and people are dying as we speak.”

The DEC Appeal
The DEC appeal in Scotland has raised around £1.6 million in under two weeks as part of a UK wide total of more than £15m.

The money raised is already being used by the DEC’s member agencies to provide life-saving aid to millions of people in communities like those in northwest Syria and others where they now have to face the threat of coronavirus on top of existing extreme dangers of conflict, hunger and shortages of water to wash their hands to slow the spread of the virus.

Sally Foster-Fulton, head of Christian Aid Scotland and the DEC Scotland chair, said: “We have seen here how deadly and frightening coronavirus can be. But just imagine what it would be like to be faced with the threat of Covid-19 when you live in an overcrowded refugee camp, where social distancing is impossible and where you don’t even have access to clean water to wash your hands.

“During the pandemic, communities across Scotland have come together to protect each other from the threat of the virus.

“Now we’re asking people to show the same solidarity with people around the world facing this silent killer. While we’re hugely grateful for all the generous support so far – more than one-and-a-half million donated in just over a week – we need a lot more.

“Every pound counts and will help save lives.”

Funds raised by the appeal will go to help people in Yemen, Syria, Somalia, South Sudan, DRC, Afghanistan, and the Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh.

Donations will be used to: provide families with clean water, soap and information on keeping themselves safe; provide frontline medical and aid workers with equipment and supplies to care for the vulnerable and sick; and ensure families get enough food to prevent malnutrition, particularly among children.

The appeal has been backed by the Scottish Government, which has contributed £240,000 to the relief effort through its Humanitarian Emergency Fund.
The appeal is also being supported by the UK Government through its Aid Match scheme.