AVSI in Syria
- Damasco HQ Office
We have been in the country since 2015, in Damascus and Aleppo, supporting activities for women, children and disabled people.
The most important project is "Open Hospitals", aimed at developing three non-profit hospitals and four dispensaries, to ensure care for all victims of the war, even the poorest.
The war that began in Syria in March 2011 has caused what the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has called "the greatest humanitarian crisis of our time".
The UN agency OCHA (2021 data) has estimated that the humanitarian emergency involves nowadays 14 million people, 6.1 being children and 6.7 million still internally displaced. Moreover 12 million people still live in food insecurity and 80% of the population in Syria live below poverty line.
Supporting the population
AVSI is one of 27 international organizations present in Syria, working on several fronts to support the Syrian people. In Damascus and Aleppo, supporting activities for women and education for children and promoting the well-being for the poorest one, reaching thousands of beneficiaries each year.
The health care crisis and the Open Hospitals Campaign
In 2017, AVSI launched the Open Hospitals project, promoted by the Nunciatura Apostolica in Damascus along with Cor Unum and the Gemelli Foundation, in order to give free cures to poor patients in three Syrian non-profit hospitals and, from 2021, in four dispensaries.
This work was necessary in the face of an unprecedented health crisis: nearly 11.5 million people, 40% of which are children, do not receive adequate medical care. In Aleppo, more than 2 million people do not have access to hospitals, in Damascus, more than a million. The health system cannot cope with the demand for care and families cannot pay their medical bills.
By the end of June 2022, more than 74,000 patients had been treated for free thanks to this project.
