Al Ghandura, Syria: Her scarred hands wrapped in gloves, Malakeh Harbaliyya lifted an infant out of an incubator at a hospital in Syria’s rural north, holding him gently as he guzzled milk from a bottle.
Nearly two years ago, the nurse and her brave colleagues were scrambling to save premature babies from heavy bombardment of Aleppo city, before ultimately being forced to quit the facility altogether.
Now the same team of doctors has reunited to open Hope Hospital in northern parts of the province still outside regime control.
“I think of the children first before thinking of myself, because their lives are in our hands,” said 31-year-old Harbaliyya at the facility in rebel-held Al Ghandura. “Their tiny souls didn’t do anything to deserve this war.”
In November 2016, Harbaliyya was working in the only children’s hospital still operating in rebel parts of Aleppo city when an air strike slammed into the building. In footage of the aftermath, Harbaliyya is seen scooping up a baby in a light pink blanket, then suddenly bursting into loud sobs.
Barely eight months later, after evacuating the city, a car bomb sent Harbaliyya herself into intensive care in neighbouring Turkey.
But she has pulled through, and the severe burns on her hands have today healed into a swirl of scars.
Her hair covered by a pink-coloured scarf and dressed in a top that reads “Girls for the Future,” Harbaliyya beamed as she lovingly pinched a frail infant’s cheeks.
“My colleagues at the Hope Hospital — the staff with me here — gave me the will to live,” she said.
In blue scrubs, Dr Hatem greeted his colleagues at the door before heading in to examine a girl squirming on a consultation bed from stomach pain. The hallway features a large portrait of Mohammad Wassim Maaz, a beloved children’s doctor who died in an air strike on Aleppo city in April 2016. Later that year, after the city’s Children’s Hospital was knocked out of action and as a regime victory loomed, Hatem and his colleagues formulated a plan.
With government troops closing in, the staff knew they would soon be evacuated from Aleppo and wanted to stay together, said the 32-year-old doctor, also the hospital’s director.
“Wherever we went, we wanted to set up a children’s hospital,” said Hatem, preferring not to give his surname.
In under a month, a crowd-funding campaign by the Turkey-based Independent Doctors Association and Britain’s CanDo charity gathered enough donations from around the world to rehabilitate and run a new hospital for a whole year. — AFP
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