NAM Health Ministers Worry over Deteriorating Health Conditions in Occupied Syrian Golan

GENEVA- Peoples of the world need to enjoy equal rights as regards the access to high standard health care without discrimination, Health Ministers of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) countries have stressed.

In a statement at the end of their seventh meeting at the UN headquarters in Geneva with the participation of Syria’s delegation led by Health Minister Sa’d al-Nayef, the ministers affirmed the role the Non-Aligned Movement can play in providing effective and safe medicine to the people with acceptable prices.

The health ministers expressed concern over the deteriorating health condition in occupied Palestine and the occupied Syrian Golan as a result of the Israeli occupation authorities’ oppressive measures. They also warned of the effects of climate changes on public health at the world level and of the spread of polio and pandemic flu.

During the meeting, which was chaired by the Iranian Health Minster and attended by the Director General of the World Health Organization (WHO) Margaret Chan, the Syrian Health Minister said that by the eruption of the crisis in the country, Syria was the first among the East Mediterranean Countries, member in the WHO, that achieved remarkable progress regarding the attainment of the development goals of the millennium, particularly concerning vaccination. 

Al-Nayef talked about the damage caused to the health sector as a result of the incessant armed groups’ terrorist attacks and clarified the repercussions of these attacks on public health, environment and climate.

“The armed groups cut off water and electricity supply to more than 3 million people in Aleppo, causing threats of environmental and infectious diseases,” al-Nayef said.

He pointed out that the ministry has recently launched six successive vaccination campaigns against polio providing ammunition to more than 2.8 million kids in Syria.

The minister asserted that “the unfair economic siege has directly affected all the components of the health sector in Syria. It has bad repercussions on the general health situation and blocked the ministry’s efforts to ensure qualitative medicine, vaccines and medical equipments.”

“This embargo has also been accompanied by unprecedented misleading media campaign aiming to falsify facts to serve political purposes,” he added.

Al-Nayef affirmed that Syria overcame the pressures put on the health sector in the country by the high-level commitment of its health institutions and by the help of its friends around the world.

For her part, Chan thanked Syria for its cooperation with the WHO in the area of public health, pointing out that Syria has implemented a perfect plan to fight polio and achieved high coverage rate regarding vaccination.

She said that she was confident that cooperation with Syria would continue to eradicate polio as well as the rest of the infectious and vaccination-covered diseases.

H. Mustafa