The Turkey-based charity, Molham Team, founded in 2012 by Syrian university students has offices and recognition as a registered charitable organization in Canada, Germany, Sweden, and Turkey, has launched a campaign to provide treatment to cancer patients in the liberated territories of northern Syria.
The campaign, operating with the cooperation of the medical and media institutions in the liberated north, under the slogan “Save Them” aims to raise an initial $500,000 for “treating cancer patients and securing equipment and treatment centers under the supervision of a committee of those in charge of the campaign,” however the costs of such a vital project far exceeds these initial goals as mentioned in the Save Them prospectus, “radiographic equipment …may cost two million dollars with installation… [and] chemotherapy doses for three months …will cost half a million dollars.”
Working alongside physicians living and practicing in northern Syria, as well as the Idlib Health Directorate, oncology centers, and the Medical Office in Bab al-Hawa the project has broad support from the battered healthcare sector and Syrian people who have been systemically targeted and attacked by Assad and his Russian allies over the last 12 years.
Healthcare workers on the ground have called upon the international community “to take legal and moral responsibility” in helping the Syrians suffering from cancer in addition to displacement, war and the aftermath of the most devastating earthquakes in nearly a century. “Stop the Assad regime’s killing machine, siege and chemical weapons,” the statement reads before declaring, “we don’t demand toys and chocolate for our children, we only demand effective drugs and medical equipment!”
The statement also mentions that the world failed the Syrian people in the aftermath of the earthquakes, and those delays and failures cost thousands of lives, similarly, in the case of these cancer patients, “the necessary actions are required in the necessary time because the matter cannot wait!”
Abdul Qader, a Syrian child and prospective beneficiary of the campaign is quoted on the Molham Team’s site saying, “I feel sad when I see children my age playing and going to school while I’m at home unable to move because of my illness.” There are many children like Abdul Qader who are currently unable to gain treatment for their illness, and are these children and many others suffering from treatable illnesses that the Save Them campaign aims to cure and to “save the lives of thousands of cancer patients who can’t have treatment.”
