Syria: UN teams support cholera vaccination in northeastern camps

This article is published in association with United Nations.

In northeast Syria, UN teams pressed ahead with a lifesaving cholera vaccine campaign in Al Hol detention camp complex on Friday, despite rumours of attacks by ISIL extremists and uncertainty across the war-torn country, following the overthrow of the Assad regime. 

The cholera outbreak was detected in the camp in early October and subsequently confirmed by laboratory tests. Because Al Hol does not have a specialist treatment centre for acute watery diarrhoea, it is crucial that as many people are vaccinated as quickly as possible, the UN Children’s Fund, UNICEF, insists. 

“For the first time we received the vaccine of cholera from northwest Syria to the northeast to vaccinate people in Al Hol camp, even [despite] the escalation and security situation in the country, but we managed to access to the people and get them with the vaccine,” UNICEF health and nutrition officer Khourchid Hasan told UN News.

Mr. Hasan credited the caretaker authority in Damascus with making the shipment possible, along with the local authorities in Syria’s northeast, who facilitated delivery of the vaccines to the gates of Al Hol, which is controlled by the Kurdish-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

Conditions ‘back to normal’

And despite threats published on social media last December “that there will be an attack on this camp and [that ISIL planned on] releasing their families” which closed access to Al Hol for three days, Mr. Hasan insisted that the vaccine rollout will not stop. 

“Everything is back to normal,” he said, adding that at least 14,000 people have received a cholera vaccination so far: “The campaign is ongoing even during the season’s holidays and the vaccination teams are doing a great job there to give this lifesaving as treatment to children and their caregivers.”

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Teams of vaccinators work by making their way on foot through the camp’s tented shelters with a loudhailer urging families to bring themselves and their children to receive their dose. Once delivered, the vaccine protects against cholera, which can be deadly within hours if it is not treated correctly.

Mr. Hasan stressed that that the campaign was able to go ahead after the agency successfully transported 25,000 doses of vaccine from northwest Syria across former active battle lines. He also praised the awareness-raising work of UNICEF’s social behaviour change and risk communication colleagues and partners, who engaged with community networks in support of the oral cholera vaccine campaign and fostered trust among Al Hol’s population.

For years, Al Hol has housed the wives and children of ISIL fighters, displaced people and refugees caught up in the Syrian war, which erupted after deadly Government repression of peaceful protesters in 2011.

Conditions remain dire

The majority of those held there by the Kurdish-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) are Syrian and Iraqi nationals. Conditions are dire and have been the subject of numerous alerts by top rights experts reporting to the Human Rights Council.

Foreign nationals who either went to or were coerced to travel to Syria to join ISIL fighters and their children are held in an annexe of the camp, which is divided into five zones. In December, the population of the tented settlement was almost 40,000 people.

Al Hol is in fact two different camps: Al Hol, which is close to the Iraqi border, and Roj camp, located on the border with Turkïye; they are both in Al-Hasakeh governorate. Male ISIL fighters are held in a prison in Al-Hasakeh city about 45 kilometres away.

Cholera was detected for the first time in Syria in 2022 but the camp escaped infection. “We vaccinated immediately (in 2022) as a precautionary measure, but this time it’s appeared and started in Al Hol camp,” UNICEF’s Mr. Hasan explained, citing funding shortfalls, poor nutrition, dirty water and bad sanitation as contributing factors in the current outbreak.

Agencies on site

Several UN agencies have a presence in Al Hol in addition to the UN Children’s Fund, including the UN sexual and reproductive agency, UNFPA, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the NES NGO Forum network operating in northeast Syria.

“Those [NGOs] are supported by the local authority, but the need is still very high, especially for secondary health care,” Mr. Hasan stressed. 

“There are three field hospitals in Al Hol camp and one field hospital in Roj camp, but still there is a huge need for medicines for non-communicable diseases, for secondary healthcare. And now, because of the security situation, it’s a big challenge to refer the people from those camps outside the camp to go to private hospitals, for example, in Al-Hasakeh, or Qamishli.”