Efforts to distribute aid in opposition-held areas have been hampered by a civil war that has splintered the country for more than a decade.
Syria has seen a brutal civil war since 2011 that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives and displaced millions while infrastructure in opposition areas was destroyed due to bombardments. (Reuters Archive)
The World Health Organization has said it was particularly concerned over the welfare of people in northwestern Syria, an opposition-controlled region with little access to aid since the earthquakes struck last week.
"It's clear that the zone of greatest concern at the moment is the area of northwestern Syria," WHO's emergencies director, Mike Ryan, told reporters in Geneva.
"The impact of the earthquake in areas of Syria controlled by the government is significant, but the services are there and there is access to those people. We have to remember here that in Syria, we've had ten years of war. The health system is amazingly fragile. People have been through hell," he added during the briefing on Wednesday.
Efforts to distribute aid have been hampered by a civil war that has splintered the country for more than a decade.
Civil war enmities have obstructed at least two attempts to send aid across frontlines into Syria's northwest, but an aid convoy reached the area overnight.
Ryan, however, described the opening of the crossing points as a sign "all sides are stepping back and focusing on the needs of the people right now."
"It is an impossibility at times to provide adequate health care in the context of eternal conflict," he said.
"We've seen a huge ramp-up of aid. We've seen the deployment of emergency medical teams. We've seen all the things that we need to see in a disaster. But this is not sustainable unless we have a more peaceful context in which this can happen more effectively."
WHO asks for more aid access
Meanwhile, senior WHO officials visiting to Damascus in the wake of last week's quakes asked Syrian regime leader Bashar al Assad to open more border crossings with Türkiye to get aid to areas of northern Syria hit by powerful earthquakes.
"We requested that he (Assad) allow additional cross-border access points, which he indicated he was open to," WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a briefing in Geneva.
"On Monday, two more cross border points were opened, allowing convoys from Türkiye into the northwest of the Syrian Arab Republic."
Source: Reuters
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