With empty stomachs and trembling bodies, they struggle to secure medicine' price

The repercussions of the siege are severe on the residents of the Sheikh Maqsoud neighborhood, which is besieged by the Damascus government in the city of Aleppo, depriving it of medicines, food, and fuel.

Amina's family, displaced from the village of Qara Kol in the Balbula district of the occupied Afrin Canton, is one of hundreds or thousands of families besieged in the neighborhood that shelters displaced people from the occupied Afrin Canton and displaced people from neighboring neighborhoods in the city of Aleppo.

Amina Hussein (56 years old), who lives in the Sheikh Maqsoud neighborhood, struggles every day to secure the necessary medicines for treatment for herself and her family members.

Amina has been suffering from allergic asthma for about 25 years, while her eldest daughter suffers from heart disease, like her father, Muhammad Jaafar, who is 65 years old. The only one who does not suffer from health problems is their youngest daughter.

In the winter, asthma symptoms intensify, and they need warmth to avoid diseases that affect the respiratory system, but Amina’s situation is different, as she was forced to rely on burning scraps of cloth that her 2 daughters bring from the sewing workshop in which they work, but burning scraps causes emissions that worsen the condition of people with asthma.

Amina says that she was bedridden for nearly 2 months and relied on flowers to relieve the symptoms of her asthma.

As for her husband, who finds movement difficulties and pain in the chest and upper parts, in addition to back pain and intermittent nosebleeds, he has no longer been able to obtain the high-priced medication since late 2023.

Before that, his two daughters received a weekly wage of 150,000 Syrian pounds, and they provided him with a portion of the price of the medicine. However, after that, with the intensification of the Damascus government’s siege, the closure of many workshops, and the reduction of the number of workers, the two daughters’ salaries decreased to 100,000 per week, what prompted the family to give up buying some household necessities to cover the father’s treatment expenses, amounting to about 300,000 per week.

Amina says, “We used to secure some medicines in exchange for depriving ourselves of what we desire, such as staying a whole day without food, because it was difficult for us to secure medicine and necessities together.”

She also had to sell 100 liters of heating oil, which was her allotment of heating material, in order to continue her husband’s treatment. Each family was scheduled to receive 200 liters, but the siege reduced the allocation to only 100. 

Sh-S

ANHA