(Zaman Al Wasl)- The local council in Arbeen town in besieged Eastern enclave of Damascus has formed an emergency committee to provide technical and health services to displaced who are now permanently living in basements as the city has witnessed several months of systematic bombing of residential neighborhoods.
Abu al-Yosr Baraa, the director of the local council’s media office in Arbeen, said that the committee's work aims at equipping 40 of the 75 basements in Arbeen. He said that the basements require immediate maintenance, it is necessary to establish health care provisions, and provide water and sanitation services daily based on residents’ needs.
He added that 17 of the basements are not inhabitable as they lack the minimum necessities to sustain life. Currently, some basements include several families, up to 25 families, at the same time. The majority of these basements lack sources of heating which increases these families’ suffering.
“The Committee seeks to provide services for all residents and displaced people present in Arbeen,” Abu al-Ysor said. He continued indicating that the main problem the committee faced is the regime and Russians’ continued bombardment of residential neighborhoods using various types of weapons. He said that the recent military campaign against the city has left dozens of dead and wounded, and significantly destroyed infrastructure and public and private facilities.
Despite 2500 families being forcefully displaced from their neighborhoods to other neighborhoods considered more secure within the city, 14000 families were unable to leave their neighborhoods due to the lack of suitable alternative housing. These families have been pushed to live in basements to increase their chances of surviving the bombing, but they still face the continued danger of dying as the regime and the Russian forces use thermobaric missiles which have an extremely high destructive capability.
Life inside Basement
Living for long periods of time in poorly ventilated and unequipped basements poses a severe and serious challenge to the health of Arbeen’s residents. Life in the basements comes with multiple diseases and risks due to high humidity, overcrowding and poor services. The negative effects appear mainly in children, women and the elderly who need food, medicine and warmth.
According to a recent survey conducted by the Arbeen local council, around 1400 families out of 7600 families are living in basements. Hassan Younis, the chairman of the local council, indicated that the current health situation of the families living in the basements is very bad. He aded that some volunteer medical teams are trying to make periodic trips to the shelters to assess the health of residents, the suitability of the housing, other than monitoring patients and providing them with medicine.
In an interview with Zaman al-Wasl, Younis said that the medical teams recorded many of the diseases spread among the families living in the basements including respiratory and chest problems, asthma, scabies and lice, diabetes and blood pressure problems.
The regime’s military campaign on Arbeen city started in the last days of 2017 and resulted in the destruction of seven neighborhoods filled with civilians. As a result of the campaign, the neighborhoods are uninhabitable as 30% of the houses have been destroyed as well as the complete destruction of two schools.
Zaman Al Wasl
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