Dr. Zaher Sahloul

The scale of the disaster in Ghouta did not truly sink in until I saw the images streaming in online. These are the images that throttle the soul—children, dead, lying in rows among hundreds, their angelic faces a chilling contrast to the monstrosity that claimed their lives.pic.twitter.com/CpNHlWuje6

Nothing in medical school prepares you for this. Syrian doctors had been preparing for the worst for three years before the massacre, treating victims of sniper attacks, shelling, barrel bombing, and even small scale chemical weapon attacks—with shamefully limited resources—pic.twitter.com/aUCIsF43Lc

Ghouta’s fate seemed to have been written for it long before last year’s attack. It is a strategic area outside Damascus, then under the control of the opposition. Before the crisis, it had a vibrant population of 2 million people, depleted to about 800,000pic.twitter.com/ezlApbwGz7

Local folklore says Ghouta is the site of the Armageddon, where an army of believers face the forces of evil before Judgment Day.pic.twitter.com/DvTBaKHUjf

The doctors all told a similar story— a large number of panicking patients, extremely distressed women & children arriving by foot or carried by motorcycles and cars, collapsing on the floors of the emergency rooms,foaming from the mouth, coughing, convulsing, and gasping for airpic.twitter.com/Qm10IDoZ1b

All had pinpoint pupils, a sign of exposure to an organophosphoric agent, or nerve gas.pic.twitter.com/iOHRIe2i4P

Dr Mahmoud, told me that he was the only doctor in a small hospital in Eid Terma that has capacity of 20 beds and only two ventilators. His hospital was flooded by more than 700 patients chocking to death within few hours after midnight. He and his nurses did what they could.pic.twitter.com/4zgkJqIGJf

They gave antidotes, Atropine injections that reverse the effect of Sarin, Oxygen, bronchodilators, steroids and used their only two Ventilators. Several members of his team developed the same symptoms as they did not have proper protective gear.pic.twitter.com/f91TMY1UKe

Sarin can cause harm by touching the patients exposed to it or their clothing. One nurse died. Dr Mahmoud had to decide which patients should be resuscitated and live and which patients he can’t and had to let go. By the morning, 144 patients died, 2/3of them were children.pic.twitter.com/1J7ShTS8N1

Until today, that night haunts him. Every morning before he goes to work, he enters silently the bedroom of his children to make sure that they are breathing. That night, 1,429 people were killed in cold blood..mostly women and children. There were more than 12,800 injuredpic.twitter.com/oEapVBRg5s

That night will remain in the memory of every human being who lived in Ghouta and survived. No one can describe that night and what happened to it except those who lived there that night. In August, 2013 there were ONLY 100,000 people killed in Syria and ONLY 1 million refugees.pic.twitter.com/88UPbL7KvR

Fast forward 6 years of failures of both Obama and Trump’s administrations in grasping the gravity of the Syrian crisis, there are now half a million people killed in Syria and 12 million displaced including 6 million refugees.pic.twitter.com/joanaTQ0nP