Rebels capture tonnes of Atropine, sarin treatment near Damascus

Tonnes of medicine became under rebels control after capturing Tamico factory in Damascus suburbs yesterday, according to footage has circulated on the internet.

The most important medicine was the anti-dote, Atropine, the simplest treatment for nerve gas attacks.

Two months ago on August 21 thousands of sick and dying Syrians had flooded the hospitals in the Damascus suburbs before dawn, hours after the first nerve gas sarin rockets landed, their bodies convulsing and mouths foaming. Their vision was blurry and many could not breathe.

Overwhelmed doctors worked frantically, jabbing their patients with injections of their only antidote, atropine, hoping to beat back the assault on the nervous system waged by suspected chemical agents. In just a few hours, as the patients poured in, the atropine ran out.

Activists said the huge stored tonnes of Atropine was another clear evidence which criminalizes Tyrant Bashar al-Assad, who left his people dying when the anti-sarin was hidden.

A doctor treating people injured in last chemical attacks in Syria has described conditions in his hospital even before the attack as “primitive.”

Omar Hakeem, a surgeon in a hospital in the Damascus suburb of Gouta, where the attacks took place, communicated with the BMJ by email to tell how his hospital treated 825 patients on the morning of the chemical attack on 21 August. Some 64 of these patients died, including 13 children.

Hakeem said that patients displayed the classic symptoms of a chemical attack, including frothing at the mouth, blurred vision, convulsions, and difficulty breathing.

Atropine, the drug these doctors are using, is an extremely common drug. The World Health Organization has it on their “Essential Drugs List,” a list of drugs that constitute the baseline of medical care. It is also the most common drug used to combat nerve agents—the chemicals that block the communication between nerves and organs. The symptoms described by the Times—convulsions, foaming mouths, blurry vision, difficulty breathing—are all associated with the use of these nerve agents.