Reporting by Faris Rifai
(Zaman Al Wasl)- Bashar Manaa, a 16-year-old boy from Idlib province have been suffering of almost complete paralysis due to an injury happened 3 months ago when he was removing a rubble of regime airstrikes.
Bashar’s uncle said that he was injured when his family were removing the rubble of their house after being hit by an strike, but he fell over a metal pole that entered his back and injured his spine cord.
Then when he managed to stand up, he fell down in a swamp which led to injuring his neck.
The uncle continued that Bashar was taken to Maarat Noman for treatment, but he was transferred to Bab al-Hawa where he had CT imaging, and blood test done, but still, they were not able to treat him, until he arrived Antakya then to Gaziantep where he was diagnosed with a bleeding in the neck.
Doctors confirmed that Bashar’s spinal cord has been almost completely cut, according to the uncle, who mentioned that Bashar receives external respiration via throat.
The uncle Abo al-Kassem mentioned that Bashar can move his legs and right arm slightly, but doctors needed to amputate one finger of his left hand due to gangrene because of ischemia.
The uncle detailed that Bashar’s father was killed and he had 5 siblings, who live in different refugees camps in the Turkish city of Rihaniyah and the village of Haish in the countryside of Idlib, they are very poor and cannot afford for treatment abroad for Bashar.
UNICEF reported that after more than five years of war in Syria, about 470,000 died, more than 1 million injured and 11.3 million forced to leave their houses.
Moreover, according to UNICEF, 8.4 million children, more than 80% of Syria’s child population , have been affected by the conflict, either in Syria or as refugees in neighboring countries. In 2015 alone, the agency documented nearly 1,500 “grave violations” against children. The majority of these violations were cases of killing or maiming from the use of explosive weapons in populated areas.
The UNICEF's report summarised that 8 in 10 children in Syria are in need of humanitarian assistance, and almost 4 in 10 children in Syria have been displaced from their homes. 3 in 10 Syrian children under age 5 have not received routine vaccination, and half of them are out of school.
The report mentioned that one study in a Turkish refugee camp showed that more than 4 in 10 Syrian children showed symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.
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