RAQQA, Syria (North Press) – Mahmoud pays expenses beyond his powerafter being diagnosed with a lethal disease. Whenever he travels for treatment, he needs millions of Syrian Pounds apart from the necessary medications without any help from medical associations.
Mahmoud al-Abdoul, 30, from the town of al-Karama, 35km east of Raqqa, had cancer over six months ago. He is forced to go to Damascus hospitals every 20 days for treatment; each time, he pays expenses beyond his ability.
Cancer patients pay massive amounts of money for treatment, especially since some pay for the chemotherapy themselves. This has become a constant suffering for them as they are forced to sell their belongings and furniture in order to continue their treatment amid the absence of medical associations that might have helped.
Al-Abdoul said he needs to travel to Damascus’ hospitals every 20 days, and every time he buys the needed chemotherapy drugs at his personal expense as they are unavailable in hospitals.
Each chemotherapy dose costs about two million Syrian Pounds (SYP, which equals about $ 260). Then he needs to buy expensive medications, which are necessary after taking the doses, hoping to defeat the disease.
The patients of the “malignant” disease, as it is called locally, pay for their treatment as there are no medical associations that provide support in Raqqa. There are only some simple initiatives that provide antibiotics pills.
Despite having 20 cancer patients in the town of al-Karama alone, al-Abdoul said he received a sum of money from an association only once. As a result of absence of support and assistance in paying expenses of treatment, each time, he sells some household items.
He calls for help, especially since he is eligible to remove the tumor but cannot afford to do the surgery. He cannot afford it alone either, so he asks for support to survive the disease.
In an exclusive interview with North Press late in March, an official at the al-Karama dispensary said that they no longer had the capacity to receive patients due to the shortage in medications.
Like al-Abdoul, Abdullah al-Shanan, 37, travels to Damascus hospitals for treatment every week.
He receives treatment in one of the public hospitals of Damascus, but he buys the expensive doses if they are unavailable.
Due to difficult economic conditions that the people of Raqqa and its countryside in general and cancer patients in particular go through, many cannot buy necessary drugs for treatment.
Raqqa has been run by the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) since 2017 after the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) backed by the US-led Global Coalition liberated the city and its countryside from ISIS. The group had turned it to its alleged “caliphate”.
The AANES was first formed in 2014 in the Kurdish-majority regions of Afrin, Kobani and Jazira in northern Syria following the withdrawal of the government forces. Later, it was expanded to Manbij, Tabqa, Raqqa, Hasakah and Deir ez-Zor after the SDF defeated ISIS militarily there.
Many patients skip treatment appointments because of their inability to secure the costs hence comes the role of charity foundations that help patients amid the poor living conditions of the majority of Syrians.
The expenses are not limited to buying medicine as patients who travel to other Syrian territories for treatment bear the burden of massive expenses of accommodation and food due to the high costs of living in government-held areas, especially as some patients stay for more than one month.
Even so, al-Shanan has not received any help from anyone during the entire duration of his treatment.
To elevate the burden of patients, Hussein al-Sadhan established the Cancer Fund Association due to the absence of organizations that support patients with this disease.
The association aims to financially support patients to ease the expenses of medicine, accommodation, and travel.
Al-Sadhan opened the association at the beginning of the holy month of Ramadan and currently helps and provides financial assistance to 17 patients according to the support they receive.