Our Al Imaan Hospital in Sarmada, Idlib, provides displaced people – particularly women and children – with essential healthcare 24 hours a day.
After a decade of war in Syria, almost half of all health facilities in Syria are either partly operational, or completely out of service. This reduced capacity has led to compromised services and the outbreak of disease, putting the most vulnerable people at even greater risk. Al Imaan is the only hospital of this size in the area, and it serves an extremely vulnerable population of displaced people.
Al Imaan Hospital specialises in maternal health, treating an average of 6,000 people and performs 12,000 procedures per month. It also has an ambulance service and provides treatment for malnutrition, protection services, winter support, and emergency surgery.
We also plan to hire specialists and open child-friendly spaces so that families, mothers and children are welcomed and protected.
We also run child nutrition awareness for mothers, and established a mobile clinic and primary healthcare centre to provide medical care, including psychosocial support to displaced families in hard-to-reach places.
In the second half of 2020 alone, we delivered 2,402 babies at Al Imaan Hospital, and supported a total of 37,460 people.
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When you donate £1, 9p goes into keeping Human Appeal running.
Another 13p goes back into raising funds – that allows us to be ready to raise awareness at a moment’s notice when tragedy strikes. Between 2019 and 2021, we grew our income by a huge 186%, allowing us to support an extra 2.8 million people, by raising funds through that small 13 pence.
Finally, and most importantly, 78p out of every £1 you donate goes straight to helping the most vulnerable people.
Charity is a gift, offering endless mercy to those who give, as well as mercy to the vulnerable people who receive it. Our admin fee helps us to get your donation to where you intended it. That’s why we like to think of it as the stamp on the envelope of your mercy.
How does our admin fee support this project?
It costs £15 to provide one mother or baby with lifesaving medical care at Al Imaan Hospital.
A small percentage of this goes towards our admin fee, and that helps us train and hire medical staff, and stay resilient even in conflict. Since opening in 2014, our hospital has been bombed twice, in our old location in Aleppo. Our admin fee helped us to rebuild after the first bombing and, after the second, more severe attack, it helped us to evacuate and reopen at our current hospital in Idlib.
It helps us to integrate our hospital with our other health services in the area – such as our primary healthcare centres and mobile clinics, providing free healthcare to those who need it most.
It’s also what keeps us accountable, allowing all our projects to go through thorough financial regulation, monitoring, and evaluation, so that we can report back to partners, regulators, local authorities, and to you, ensuring that we’re always accountable for any donations or support we accept.
Human Appeal’s teams work in some of the most dangerous places in the world, often at great personal risk, driven by the human need to help others. We’re there, and we’ll always be there, for as long as our help is needed.
Let’s hear from Hanan, head nurse at Al Imaan Hospital, as she explains how our admin fee helps to save lives.
Hanan al-Shaikh is the head of nursing at Al Imaan Hospital, where she supervises the day-to-day running of the hospital.
“We help women with delivery, as well as prenatal and postnatal treatment, including C-sections. We also support treatment and recovery for gynaecological diseases and malnutrition.
“There are some babies born with poor health relating to their pre-birth conditions – we have an incubator ward and we provide first aid in cases where the baby has respiratory or other problems.
“We perform more than 25 natural births each day, and around 150 caesareans each month. Our gynaecology clinic performs around 100 examinations a day, and we treat cysts, miscarriages, diseases, and fibroids.
“Most of the people we help are displaced, living in camps, and lacking healthcare. Because of the incredibly high number of displaced people in this area, and all of them depending on us, we’re under great pressure. Most other hospitals in the area aren’t open anymore because there are no funds to keep them open.
“When a baby isn’t born in a hospital they lack warmth and the care of a midwife who can make sure that they are in good health.
“Sometimes we have bittersweet cases – like the time one mother arrived at the hospital, but she’d already passed away. But the baby’s heartbeat was still strong and we managed to operate and save the baby.
“We’ve had a few cases of triplets and quads being born in our hospital, which is always wonderful and spreads so much joy, especially amidst all the lives and children lost to the war.
“Al Imaan relieves displaced people of a huge burden, and we have greatly reduced the infant death rate here.
“The clinic is open daily, and our ambulance is available and we offer milk, butter and other nutritious items to children with malnutrition.
“Al Imaan’s services are wonderful and there is a large population that depends on it – people who have lost their homes and are living with war and destruction. I hope anyone who is able to supports and donates to this hospital, so that we can offer women in difficulty more help.”
Abdul Rahman is a young father who was displaced from Saraqib. He lives in Sarmada in a tent with his wife, Aisha, and their 2 month-old newborn quadruplets, Muhammad, Rawan, Rayan, and Razan.
When Abdul Rahman and Aisha found out they were expecting quadruplets – which carries a much higher risk, especially for displaced people – they were extremely worried that they’d struggle to afford the costs of pregnancy and delivery.
But your support of Al Imaan Hospital made sure that Aisha and her babies were taken care of; we provided her with antenatal care, delivered her quadruplets by C-section, and, now we provide her with baby milk to help her feed all four of her babies.
“We came here, not by choice, and live in a tent. Life here is a tragedy but alhamdulilah for everything.
“When we were in our home we used to work because we had land where we could grow plants, but here there is no work.
“During winter it has been cold, and a snowstorm hit which was freezing cold. It affected us a lot. My quadruplets needed warmth but I live in a tent with no heating at all. At night I try to protect them from the cold, covering them with blankets.
“When my wife found out she was pregnant with quadruplets she was really scared, it was very difficult for us. We were at a loss. Giving birth is very expensive and we don’t have livelihoods.
“When we heard about Al Imaan, I took my wife there, they checked that everything was okay. After that, they would take my wife to the hospital via ambulance because we don’t have a way to get there. They supported us throughout the pregnancy and always monitored my wife and provided her with free healthcare and medicine.
“When it came to giving birth, they gave us the best welcome – the whole staff is great. Alhamdulilah, Al Imaan is really good. If it weren’t for them, our situation would be so difficult; we wouldn’t know where to go.
“My children stayed in incubators for four days and the staff helped us to improve their health and be ready to come home.
“Because of the cold, we would follow up with a paediatrician at the hospital every few days, who gave us medicine and milk each month.
“Al Imaan has helped us a lot, may Allah reward them and all who help to keep it running.”
Al Imaan Hospital continues to monitor Raya’s case, and provides ongoing care and medicine, as well as regular milk for her children – Muhammad, Rawan, Rayan, and Razan.
