Hasakah water crisis aggravates health situation amid searing summer
HASAKAH, Syria (North Press) – An official in a public hospital in Hasakah city, northeast Syria, said that the number of patients have recently increased due to drinking polluted water.
Ali Younes, director of the People Hospital, told North Press, “We receive more than 50 patients daily, most of them are children suffering from diarrhea, vomiting, inflammatory bowel diseases, and stomach diseases.”
“The poor purchasing power for most people forces them to drink from unsafe sources; the majority cannot afford buying bottled water every day or buying water filters,” he said.
Younes added, “We received 700 hundred cases in May of diseases related to drinking non-potable water; cases have significantly increased in June and July.”
“The lack of drinking water, coupled with the heat wave, has led to the emergence of cases of Malta fever and Typhus,” he noted.
The water crisis in Hasakah goes back to October 2019 when Turkish forces and their affiliated factions of the Syrian National Army (SNA) occupied the cities of Sere Kaniye (Ras al-Ain) and Tel Abyad, taking control of Alouk water pumping station, which is located in the countryside of Sere Kaniye and is the main source of drinking water for people living in Hasakah city and its surroundings. Since then, SNA factions have repeatedly cut off water to the region.
The official emphasized that the number of cases visiting the hospital has increased as a result of the water outage. He called on humanitarian organizations and actors involved in Syria to find a lasting solution to the water crisis.