Medical teams needed in Madaya

GENEVA: The World Health Organisation has asked the Syrian government for permission to send mobile clinics and medical teams to the besieged town of Madaya to assess the extent of malnutrition and evacuate the worst cases, its representative said on Tuesday.

An aid convoy on Monday brought the first food and medical supplies for months to the town, where thousands are trapped and local doctors say some have starved to death.

Elizabeth Hoff, WHO representative in Damascus who went into Madaya on Monday in the convoy, said the agency needed to do a "door-to-door assessment" in the town of 42,000 people, where a Syrian doctor told her 300-400 needed "special medical care".

"I am really alarmed," Hoff told Reuters, speaking by telephone from the Syrian capital where the Norwegian expert has been based since July 2012.

"People gathered in the market place. You could see many were malnourished, starving. They were skinny, tired, severely distressed. There was no smile on anybody’s face. It is not what you see when you arrive with a convoy. The children I talked to said they had no strength to play."

On Monday, the WHO brought in 7.8 tonnes of medicines including trauma kits for wounds, medicines for treating both chronic and communicable diseases, and antibiotics and nutritional therapeutic supplies for children, Hoff said.

It intends to return on Thursday as part of a UN convoy with more medical and food supplies, she said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a group that monitors the war, said at least 300 people left the town and were taken by government forces to the Damascus region.

The UN said its vehicles were not used to take anyone out of Madaya.

Hoff said another Syrian doctor had told her that "mothers had absolutely no milk for breast-feeding, the milk had dried up and the babies are not satisfied".

"The female doctor also reported having done 27-30 C-sections (caesarean sections) in the past seven months.

She does not have the requisite training, but she saw it as a life-saving intervention," Hoff said.

Many malnourished people were too weak to leave their homes.

"We need to go in with the Syrian Arab Red Crescent for a door-to-door assessment, if there are these cases we need to verify and make sure they get urgent treatment," Hoff said.