A medical worker in Syria writes: It is impossible to transport a single aspirin tablet into eastern Ghouta, an agricultural belt just outside Damascus and the area devastated by chemical attacks last August. Instead, we – a network of doctors and activists – are forced to smuggle medicines and cash across front lines and through checkpoints throughout Syria on a daily basis. But we cannot pass the soldiers surrounding this collection of villages, home to more than one million people.

We cannot get medication in so we have set up a factory to manufacture paracetamol and antibiotics – a small lab in the middle of the farming region where brave pharmacists are forced to make what should be available for a few pounds at every corner shop.

It is more than three months since the United Nations passed a resolution that is meant to ensure that everyone, no matter where they live in Syria, gets all they need to survive. [Continue reading…]