JINHA

AMED – The Mesopotamia Society and Health Association (METSAD) has announced that it is working to bring supplies to the city of Kobanê for a 250-bed hospital.

Healthcare needs are among the most urgent in the reconstruction of Kobanê, as emerged at the Kobanê Reconstruction Conference in the main city of Diyarbakır this past weekend. The cities' three hospitals were all damaged, some totally destroyed, in the Daesh gang's assault on the city. Although many health volunteers are working in the city, surgery is currently taking place in the basement of a home, converted for the purpose.

Recently, medical workers have founded an association in Diyarbakır, METSAD, whose goal is to bring emergency supplies into the city.

"Most of the aid internationally gets stuck at the border; our real goal with this association is to work to overcome the difficulties getting it to Kobanê," said Hülya Alökmen Uyanık, of the Democratic Society Congress (DTK) Health Assembly.

"But health is not just an issue of hospitals," said Hülya, who presented a survey of the city's medical needs at the weekend's conference. "We have to think of the life that has been uprooted in Kobanê, of nature and of psychology as all part of health."

"Our perspective on healthcare doesn't approach things in a way that suffocates people with capitalism, but with a more communal and humane approach," Hülya said. The assembly has operated a health services point for Kobanê residents returning to the city from the border town of Suruç, in Northern Kurdistan, where thousands had fled. Now, they are planning free clinics for the villages of Kobanê canton.

The assembly has also trained health students in health services that emphasize, instead of over-prescribing medicine, how to train the community to treat themselves in the case of minor injuries, among other alternatives to capitalist-oriented medicine.

"These trainings made our work easier, and at the same time it opened a path for there to be even more healthcare providers working in an alternative way," said Hülya. The volunteers will now be working through METSAD to bring more healthcare and healthcare professionals to the city.

(ekip/fk/cm)