Mullingar doctor hopes Westmeath can help with Syria appeal

Medicines, clothes, blankets are all among the list of items being sought by a charity aiming to help the oppressed of Syria as the war rages on, and the colder days of winter approach.
Two million Syrian people have had to flee the country - and those left behind are trying to exist without many of the basics of life, while worrying about the threat of further chemical attack.
The charity Human Appeal International is aiming by the end of this month to send containers of aid to Syria.
“We are hoping to send out at least ten containers,” a spokesperson for the charity told the Westmeath Examiner this week.
Locally, Dr Mohammed Kamal, a Syrian-born doctor working at the Midland Regional Hospital in Mullingar, who has lost three family members in the conflict, is hoping that people will respond generously.
“After discussing with Syrian people, they need everything, but mostly food - especially milk for infants and children; clothes, shoes and blankets, as winter is very near,” he said.
Dr Kamal, who is worried for his own elderly parents, who live in a town around an hour from Aleppo.
In an interview with the Westmeath Examiner, he said that like many, they now have no electricity, no running water - and the price of bread and food generally has shot skyward.
“Two important things for the people of Syria are water and electricity,” he said.
“For water, we can help by giving money to dig artesian wells, which will provide a town with water.
“For the electricity problem, we want to provide generators that work by diesel or petrol, for every town.”
There is also an urgent need for drugs.
“Mostly they need painkillers, local anaesthetics and antiobiotics, surgical sutures, and anaesthesic drugs.
The drugs required most urgently are:
• Atropine
• Pralidoxime
• Hydrocortisone
• Ondansetron
• Diaszepam
• Salbutamol nebulising solution
• Budesoridenebulising solution (steroid)

Says Dr Kamal: “Also needed are Augmentin, Cefuroxime for adults and children; local anaesthetics such as Lignocaine, Marcaine and Chirocaine, and the following analgesics - Morphine, Pethidine and Tramadol”.
In his recent front-page interview with the Westmeath Examiner, Dr Kamal said that he is heartbroken over the two and a half years of terror that his country has been experiencing.
“I can’t sleep sometimes at night,” he said, deeply moved in the wake of news of the chemical attack by President Assad’s forces.
It’s the accounts of what has been happening to children in Syria that have most affected Dr Kamal, who relates stories of how even very young children have had their throats slashed. Rape of women has become common too.

• Anyone who would like to contact to offers aid for Syria can contact Human Appeal Ireland directly via www.humanappeal.ie or by phone on 01 2910006.