Some 50 tonnes of EU-funded medical supplies flown to Turkey from Dubai are expected to enter Syria on 31 December, a UN health official told AFP on Friday.
The supplies, sent from a European Union stockpile in Dubai, landed in Istanbul early Thursday and were to be driven to the border in the coming days.
“The supplies are still in Istanbul and going through the customs process,” Mrinalini Santhanam from the World Health Organization’s Gaziantep office in southern Turkey told AFP, saying they would be driven south and likely cross the border into Syria “on December 31.”
The aim is to support Syria’s overstretched healthcare system, which has been battered by years of war under strongman Bashar al-Assad, who was ousted by rebels on 8 December.
The shipment includes 8,000 emergency surgical kits, anaesthetic supplies, IV fluids, sterilisation materials and medications to prevent disease outbreaks, with the EU saying it would be sent to support “healthcare systems in Idlib and northern Aleppo”.
“The supplies are mainly trauma and surgical kits that will enable doctors in Syria to deliver thousands of surgical operations and to care (for) injured patients,” WHO planning analyst Lorenzo Dal Monte told AFP when the shipment landed at Istanbul airport early Thursday.
