As if you didn’t already think Doctors Without Borders had its hands full with the Ebola crisis unfolding in West Africa, the organization recently released a series of videos and photographs covering the group’s work in and around Syria. The series, “The Reach of War: A Day in the Life of the Syrian Conflict,” offers a glimpse into the activities that the organization conducts on a daily basis to aid refugees and the war-wounded in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Jordan.
The managing editor of Doctors Without Borders, Phil Zabriskie, explains in an interview with Time that the idea is to “at least suggest the scope of the medical needs that exist because of this war.”
The series begins with footage of a clinic in Ramtha, Jordan, a small town just over the border from Daraa, Syria, that consists of little more than a hospital and a bank. Dr. Haydar Alwash, a refugee from the first gulf war in Iraq, presides over a chaotic clinic where the newly injured arrive in ambulances.
The video opens with the news that three children, all with severe bleeding, will be arriving shortly. After emergency surgeries, Dr. Alwash consults with Rukaya, a 14-year-old girl who has just lost her mother and her legs. She will need two more surgeries, he tells her, following the seven she has already undergone, to prepare her legs for prosthetics.
The full article continues at http://op-talk.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/08/26/how-doctors-see-the-syrian-civil-war on the New York Times' website.