The Management of the Tell Dahab Hospital in the northern countryside of Homs is suffering from the lack of funding, especially that it offers services to thousands of the town’s residents and neighboring areas in al-Houla plain.

“Doctors without Borders” cut the funding to the hospital, except for medicines and ambulatory supplies. According the Management, the staff has been dropping out threatening to stop the work of the radiology and other departments, for the hospital is unable to pay the doctors’ salaries.

The hospital provides free services for about 15 thousand people from Tell Dahab, and the total number of people receiving health care reaches 25 thousand after adding the displaced people who came from Aqrab, Deir al-Fardis, Hirbnafsah, Talaf and other places according to doctors from the northern countryside of Homs.

The hospital offers various services including women’s surgery, medical and health care, as well as ambulatory cases via its clinics and laboratory. It also offers medications for the people, according to the Board Member Abdul Rahman Al Ibrahim, who told Enab Baladi, that the hospital is still receiving support in terms of medicines and medical supplies.

He added that the hospital’s human resources, doctors and employees, are being drained, in addition to the difficulty of supplying operation fuel, medical devices or replacing the inoperative ones: “The device stops functioning due to the difficulty of providing spare parts in the shadow of the imposed siege and the high prices of these parts if found.”

The hospital’s bored communicated with medical organizations, but it failed to provide the needed funding. Abdul Rahman said that the hospital is still offering its services to people despite the lacking devices, such as the blood separation machine and ambulances.

Khaled al-Hassan, a young man from Tell Dahab, told Enab Baladi that the hospital is offering different services, the most important of which are free medicines, tests, X-rays and Ceaserian surgeries. He said: “We hope that supporting organizations would provide funding needed to continue the hospital’s work.”

According to Dr. Musaab Ibrahim from the al-Houla plain, the hospital started to offer its services at the end of 2012; “it used to be a dispensary affiliated with the regime, and then it turned into a field hospital to provide care for the area’s people and fighters.”

The hospital follows up the cases that are transferred from Tell Dahab to the two towns of Taldou and Kafr Laha, according to the doctor, who told Enab Baladi that the funding has been decreased since February 2017, pointing out that patients often spend between a week and ten days in the hospital: “This demand operating costs to help the hospital provide its services.”

The doctor believes that supporting organizations “consider that al- Houla plain should contain a single medical point, regardless of the towns’ large size and the difficulty of transportation between them most of the time.”

He concluded that there is a continues coordination with the different entities in the area, including the “Qatar Red Crescent Society” and local councils to provide the best medical services for all people in the northern countryside in Homs.