Unable to save his family, buried in the rubble of their home in the Northwest Syrianurse Abdel Basset Khalil, had no choice but to continue relentlessly tending to the hundreds of wounded who flocked to the hospital where he works.

The earthquake that struck Turkey and neighboring Syria last Monday is testing hospitals in rebel-held areas of Syria, which were already facing severe shortages of staff, medicine and materials.

“I was helping people in the hospital while my wife and two daughters were under the rubble, I couldn’t do anything for them,” said Khalil, 50, a nurse anesthetist who works at Harim Hospital near the border. with Turkey.

At the time of the earthquake he came out of the hospital and realized with horror that his house, a very short distance away, had collapsed. Unable to offer any help to his family, he returned to the hospital where the injured began to arrive in waves. The dead were also taken there – among them was the hospital’s administrative director and the head of nursing.

“The first day was very difficult, very hard, like 50 years passed in a few hours,” Khalil said. For the next two he took advantage of some rare breaks at the hospital, running around his damaged home and watching the work of rescue crews. His wife and daughters were recovered dead 48 hours after the earthquake.

Today, Khalil says he takes solace in the thought that at some point he will “prostrate on their graves.” At the same time, hundreds of other families are still trapped in the collapsed buildings.

Khalil also says he has trouble sleeping, both because he lost his people and because he witnessed “horrific scenes.” He shows the pictures of his wife and children on his mobile phone and says that he will continue working at Harim’s hospital to help other people.

In the first hours after the earthquake, this small field hospital was overwhelmed with casualties. It was originally set up to treat casualties from aerial bombardments and its capacity does not exceed 30 beds, as surgeon Mohammad al-Badr explained. “The situation was so difficult that the patients were sleeping on the floor, in the entrance and in the corridors,” he added.

The hospital received about 2,500 wounded and of those, 390 died, said orthopedic surgeon Hassan al-Hamdo.

Like other nursing institutions in the region, it faces serious shortages of medical equipment. “Many patients needed a CT scan, but this test is not available anywhere in the region,” added Hamdo.

In a recent report, the International Rescue Committee (IRC) warned that the health system is at risk of collapse in northwestern Syria, a zone not controlled by the Syrian regime. Hospitals don’t have serums, gauze, pain relievers, but they also don’t have fuel, or even bags to keep the dead. And the number of patients will increase, since the survivors are forced to live under difficult conditions, at very low temperatures. “If we do not urgently receive additional funding, supplies and unimpeded humanitarian assistance, the results will be catastrophic,” the non-governmental organization warned.

The hospitals were full

At the hospital in the city of Salkin, near the border with Turkey, orthopedic surgeon Hasan Julak explained that today 800-1000 wounded people are being treated, most of them with fractures. “Fifteen minutes after the earthquake, the injured started pouring in and exceeded the hospital’s capacity,” he said.

The civil war in Syria, soon to enter its 12th year, has taken a heavy toll on health infrastructure, especially in rebel-held areas. According to the WHO, around 50% of hospitals have been shut down across the country. Those that are operating face shortages in personnel and medical equipment.

In government-controlled areas, hospitals were facing shortages even before the earthquake, as the country was under international sanctions after the war began in 2011.

In the city of Jable, five doctors were killed by the earthquake, the director of the state hospital, Mohammad al-Khali, said. Staff are working around the clock even though many have lost their homes or are at risk of losing them.