‘You feel the pain’: Amid war and geopolitical posturing, Syrian physicians struggle to contain Covid

During a trip to Afrin and Tal Abyad, Borzou Daragahi made rare visits to hospitals fighting the pandemic

A man suspected of having contacted Covid-19 recovers at the isolation ward of the hospital in the northern Syrian town of Tal Abyad (Borzou Daragahi)

A father and son arrived at the hospital, both ill and showing symptoms of Covid-19. Medics brought the elderly father, who was in his seventies, into the intensive care unit at the main hospital in the northwestern Syrian city of Afrin, and put him on oxygen and life support.

Hours later the son also took a turn for the worse, and he was put on oxygen, as well, the two men lying side by side in the isolation ward.

Quick action helped. The father survived. But his son succumbed to the disease, among the tragedies of a pandemic that has not spared war-ravaged corners of the world already stricken with death and despair.