It has been almost a year since our first training team in Rojava visited the border town of Sere Kaniye (Ras al Ain) and its local hospital. The city was occupied by the so-called Islamic State until the Kurdish YPG/YPJ forces liberated it in 2013. Sere Kaniye's hospital was destroyed by an Assad-regime airstrike in 2012 and served as a hideout for the Al-Nusra front. The medical station, which used to have enough beds for two-hundred patients, could only be put back into operation provisionally and after all it was managed to provide thirty beds in a former dental clinic which is located right behind the actual hospital.

Only six doctors and twenty nurses were responsible for the 70 000 people in their commuter belt in 2014, with the bloody reality of the frontline only ten kilometers away. All procedures were performed in two insufficiently equipped surgery rooms, unable to adapt to today's medical standards because of the grim material situation. After moving out of an old phosphor factory, which had to serve as an improvised clinic, a delivery room, an improvised emergency room and a radiology station were set up.

Back then, there was no wall without bullet holes, former sniper camps or IS-graffiti. But now, a year later, our team in Rojava is finally able to deliver some good news from Sere Kaniye. The rebuilding processes and the renovations of the hospital are proceeding step by step. A new surgery room is about to be operating, which will further enhance the population's medical care. But it is still a long way to go until the hospital fully regains its former capacity.

CADUS is going to further accompany these developments in solidarity and helps as far as our limited resources allow it. We remain highly impressed by the people of Rojava and how they manage to organize their everyday life and the reconstruction process under the circumstances of war.

But since a surgery room is only as good as the personnel working in it we would like to refer to our crowdfunding campaign designated to the financing of our medical training program.

Further information: Betterplace

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