For one week at the beginning of June 2014, I travelled as part of a medical team to Amman, Jordan to help treat casualties of the Syrian conflict. This was facilitated via ISAPS-LEAP Surgical Relief Team©, a combined humanitarian organization between Life Enhancement Association for People (LEAP) and the International Society of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons, of which I am a member. The two organizations formed an collaboration agreement in 2012 and teams of plastic surgeons have been travelling to Amman to help reconstruct some of the horrific war injuries.
As the 10th team, our path was in many ways somewhat paved, but was greatly helped by the presence of a representative of LEAP, Ryan Synder Thompson. Our team consisted of two plastic surgeons, Dr. Christian Carrasco from Spain and me, and Ciara Donohue, a nurse from Beaumont Hospital. Like going to any new place, the first day is difficult, but we quickly knuckled down to work of which there was plenty.
The Al-Makassed Charity Hospital rents 40 beds to the Treating the Wounded Syrian Programme, which is run by Syrian doctors who have fled the conflict. However, these doctors are not registered to work in Jordan so they must work under the supervision of Jordanian doctors and registered doctors such as our team. There are a number of different specialists, both Syrian and Jordanian, but the availability of reconstructive surgery is limited, hence the need for plastic surgeons from other countries. The chief of the programme had been running secret field hospitals in Syria; however, as one of his co-workers was caught, tortured and killed, he had to flee Syria, but continues to help his countrymen from across the border.
The majority of the patients we saw and treated were young men who had been injured either by barrel bombs or land mines. Many women and children had also sustained life changing injuries. It was so sad to see the devastation that had been inflicted on previously healthy people who having already often lost their home, family members, livelihood and a peaceful existence, also had to cope with a significant change in how they would be able to live their lives.
Unfortunately the most common injury we treated was the subsequence of an amputation of all or part of a limb, usually a leg. The barrel bombs and landmines cause widespread destruction of both bone and soft tissue. I thought that over my
almost thirty years in plastic surgery I had seen it all, but during one week in Jordan I had to treat worse injuries than I ever had before. Removing all the dead tissue, getting the fractures stabilized, and the wound healed is the overall aim of treating these patients and I feel we did contribute in some way to this.
It appeared to us that the patients were so accepting of what had happened to them. One night, three new casualties, all young men, were transported from the border. All of them had been injured by the same bomb. All were seriously injured, but lay so still in their beds while being examined and assessed that they seemed unconscious. On being spoken to, it was apparent that they were all fully alert, just lying still. It is not what we would be used to and it affected us all.
Once the patients are healed, many will have to go back to Syria – to what we don’t know. Jordan is not taking as many refugees as previously - they already have 600,000 of the total of 2.5 million who have fled Syria – and this is putting a significant strain on theirresources. Syria has been torn apart by this conflict and only time will tell the outcome of this brutal conflict. As a doctor, I feel privileged that I have been able to contribute in a very small way to help some of these people and I will keep them in my thoughts and prayers.