PANAMA CITY — Local pediatrician Yahia Rahim and a team of medical professionals treated as many people as possible during a trip to Syria last month. In his home city of Aleppo, children are being killed daily.
“Children hurt my feelings,” Rahim said in an interview Monday. “I see them in the street. They are either watching the airplane to see where it will drop or selling candies and cookies because maybe that’s the only income they have for the household or the dad is already gone, dead.”
Last year, teaming up with a group of local students, Rahim facilitated the collection of about 800 cans of dry baby formula, which was used as milk in Syria.
Though the drive was successful, he is now calling on churches and mosques unify for a humanitarian purpose — to collect money to donate for the purchase of medical supplies. The Bay County Islamic Society, 3312 Token Road, is currently accepting all donations.
During his medical trip last month, Rahim watched as blankets of ashes fell on structures that crumble daily. Ash white figures — adults and children — took cover, peering through thick dust to see from where the bomb dropped.
The sun descended as usual, but bombings happened throughout the night into the day. No one knew when or where another one would hit.
“Aleppo is the largest city, (including) a suburb,” of about six million people, Rahim said. “We are averaging, as we speak, and in the whole month of February, around 20 barrels day — each one of them are 1,200 pounds of TNT.”
Since the internal war started three years ago, thousands of Aleppo’s children — 211 in the month of February alone — have been killed in the Syrian civil war.
“The government actually has it, they’ll go as high as five miles high up … and they drop the barrel or the missile, mainly targeting high density population — schools, hospitals,” Rahim said. “From that aspect it’s getting much worse, much worse.”
As a result, Syria has lost 60 percent of its hospitals, according to a NBC news report.
“People are sometimes dying because of lack of oxygen, blood bank, blood transfusion,” he said. “The casualty is very hard. We’re talking about close to a quarter of a million casualties.”
Activist groups estimate the death toll to be more than 140,000 people with women and children comprising about three-fourths of the deaths. More than 2 million refugees are displaced outside of Syria and four million in Syria.
“It’s really difficult to have such an environment,” Rahim said. A fund drive would help the victims of the conflict with “trying to maximize the resources and put it into action rather than to lie down and feel agony, pain, a hopelessness feeling and disappointment.”
Local churches and mosques can take donations to the Bay County Islamic Society. Anyone who wants to donate and does not have a church or mosque may make donations directly to the organization.
The money will be used to purchase medical supplies. No amount is too little, Rahim said.
“Everything helps over there.”