With the continuation of Eastern Ghouta’s siege, a citizen dies of a terminal illness

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights learned that the a citizens died affected by his illness in the besieged Ghouta, and in the details obtained by the Syrian Observatory: the citizen died after his health got worse, where he was infected by tuberculosis about 8 months ago, but the siege and preventing the medication –as well as its absence– from reaching the Eastern Ghouta have made his health situation worse, until he died today, and the SOHR documented the death of two children today the 31st of January 2018, one of them died affected by her deteriorated medical condition, where the 18-month-old child, living in Jisreen, suffered from cancer, and her doses were stopped due to the shortage of this medicine in the Eastern Ghouta, as a result of the siege of the Ghouta by the regime forces and their allies, while a second child died affected by her deteriorated medical conditions in Hazza town, to which she was displaced coming from Al-Marj area in the Eastern Ghouta, where a young girl had cold and her condition deteriorated due to the shortage of food and medicine, resulting in her death. A state of anger prevailed among the locals due to the blind eye of the international community and the parties who didn’t provide help or transfer to the rest of ill and injured people to go out from the Eastern Ghouta to receive treatment.

Reliable sources stressed to the SOHR that most of the citizens in the Eastern Ghouta suffer shortage of materials used for warming, where the fuels haven’t entered the Eastern Ghouta since 5 years except through smugglers, and the people used the woods and available materials in the Eastern Ghouta instead, but their amount has increasingly declined and their prices have risen sharply, while the citizens lack the purchasing power to buy them, and thus many medical conditions deteriorated due to the cold. while it is noteworthy that the SOHR counted, through its activists, and with the help of medical sources in the Eastern Ghouta of Damascus, more than 720 medical cases including tens of children and citizen women, who need immediate evacuation, the evacuation which is ignored every time by the vehicles of the Red Crescent and the UN delegations accompany the humanitarian aid that enters the Eastern Ghouta, and leave without paying any attention as if they accomplished their mission perfectly, which provoked the patients and their families, and the medical sources confirmed to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights that the diseases are varied, in terms of their nature, level of progress, extent of distribution and the difficulty of being treated, as there are more than 500 patients have cancer, including more than 100 cases need immediate evacuation, due to the great drop of their conditions, also there are 59 cases, of who are believed to have cancer, are added to the 500 cases, in which the specialists of the center specialized in diagnosing and treating cancer in the Eastern Ghouta, failed to specify and diagnose their cases, due to the lack of necessary materials, and the stop of the laboratory for the same reasons, and there are more than 30 patients have the infecting tuberculosis, as well as the presence of about 25 cases of the kidney failure, and about 70 cases with varying diseases such as diabetes mellitus, immunodeficiency, thalassemia, and other diseases.

These catastrophic health conditions, as well as the deadly siege, came as a result of manipulation by traders, who the citizens of the Eastern Ghouta called the “crisis dealers”, who exploited the need of citizens and the paradoxes of the high and low value of the hard currency, to assign prices some of which is considered imaginary for the foodstuffs, including the main supplies, and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitored a list of the prices of the main supplies needed at easy home, in which the price of a package of bread reaches about SP 1900 ( $ 5 ) the price of sugar is SP 2400 ( $ 6 ), the price of rice is SP 2600, the price of Bulgur is SP 2400, the price of wheat SP 1600, the price of a kilogram of flour reaches SP 3000, the price of salt reaches the same price of the flour, the price of the vegetable oil reaches SP 3500, the olive oil reaches double of the price of the vegetable oil, all of this came with the absence of the nature gas, while the other fuels of petrol and diesel fuel are presented at high prices, in which the price of a liter of petrol reaches SP 8000 which equals $ 21, while the price of the diesel fuel is SP 5000, and as a result of the lack of heating substances, the sale of firewood for heating appeared, in which the price of a kilogram of the firewood is SP 400, and the sources confirmed to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights that some traders are able to bring foodstuffs, from time to time, through the checkpoints of the regime, but at first they have to pay taxes and bribes to the checkpoint, rated by SP 3000 for each kilogram, while the financial and alimentary conditions of some citizens dropped greatly, which led them to sell their land to people who are outside the Eastern Ghouta in return for sending them money for their living, while others sell their homes, and others head to the kitchens of the factions operating in the Eastern Ghouta, to get meals, while the rest depend on the aid of the relief organizations operating in the Eastern Ghouta.