© Photograph: Heba Aly/IRINShelling in Amoon el-Yousif's native city of Hama made it impossible for her to access needed medication from the pharmacy.
Healthcare crisis could mean life or death for many desperate Syrians left without drugs or doctors, hospitals or health centres.
Eid Hanani has not been affected by the bombs, the snipers or the shelling that have engulfed many parts of Syria. He only barely escaped death, but faced a threat of a different kind. In July, he was diagnosed with cancer of the bladder. But the only cancer hospital in the capital, Damascus, was out of the serum injections used for treatment.
The nearly two-year conflict in Syria has claimed tens of thousands of lives, destroyed entire neighbourhoods and sent hundreds of thousands of people fleeing. More quietly, however, it has eaten away at the country's healthcare system. Pharmaceutical factories, which used to produce more than 90% of the country's drug needs, are down to one-third of their former production, according to Elizabeth Hoff, the representative of the World Health Organisation (WHO) in Syria.
Many have been destroyed or damaged in the fighting - sometimes directly targeted by the opposition. The northern city of Aleppo, one of the worst affected, was home to most of the factories. Other factories are struggling to import raw materials due to sanctions imposed on Syria by western countries. Insecure routes have affected supply lines.
On the black market, Hanani was able to find an alternative to the cancer serum, smuggled in from Lebanon. The dose costs him 5,000 Syrian pounds (£43) a month, half the monthly salary of his son, the family's sole breadwinner. "Without it, the pain is extreme, I don't sleep, and eventually I would die," said Hanani, who wore a small cloth tied around his neck to cover the hole in his throat - a legacy of another bout of cancer he overcame four years ago. His dirty fingernails hold a machine against his throat to help him speak. "My life is in God's hands," he told IRIN with a smile, exposing missing teeth.
The shortage of medicines is just one part of the healthcare crisis in Syria, as hospitals run out of space and supplies, health workers struggle to get to work, patients lose access to health facilities, and medicines shoot up in price.
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