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One MRI for 4.7 million people: the battle to treat Syria’s earthquake survivors
With only 64 X-ray and 73 kidney-dialysis machines, 7 CT scanners and one MRI machine, doctors in northwest Syria are racing against the clock to treat 8,500 injuries.
The 7.8-magnitude earthquake that struck Turkey and Syria on 6 February has killed more than 50,000 people and flattened multiple cities. More than 4,500 of those who died, and 8,500 injured, are in northwest Syria, a region with no unified government that has been cut off from the world for more than 12 years amid a devastating war. Its already-depleted health-care system — 4.7 million people share just one MRI machine — is on its knees. More than 10,000 buildings are completely or partially destroyed, leaving 11,000 people homeless, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. The earthquake also destroyed warehouses that store medicines. Nature spoke to doctors, engineers and other experts on the ground, as well as those helping remotely from Europe and elsewhere in the Middle East. This is what they have said.
