The Syrian girl whose mother gave birth while trapped under the rubble of her home during this week's devastating earthquake now has a name: Aya, which in Arabic means "a sign from God." With her parents and all of her siblings dead from her, her great-uncle will be the one to take care of her.
Aya is one of untold orphans left behind by Monday's magnitude 7.8 earthquake, which has killed more than 20,000 people, including entire families, in northern Syria and southeastern Turkey.
In most cases, relatives take care of orphaned children, say doctors and experts. But those relatives who have survived are also dealing with trauma and loss of loved ones and belongings.
At a hospital in northwestern Syria, a 7-year-old redheaded girl, Jana al-Abdo, repeatedly asks where her parents were after she arrived at the center, explains Dr. Khalil Alsfouk, who is treating her. “Later we found out that she is the only one who survived among all her family,” he explains.
In the case of newborn Aya, her father's uncle, Salah al-Badran, will take care of her once she is discharged from the hospital. But her own home was also destroyed in the city of Jenderis, in northwestern Syria.
He and his family managed to escape from the one-story building, but now he and his family of 11 are living in a tent, he told The Associated Press. “After the earthquake, no one can live in their house or building. Only 10% of the buildings here are safe to live in and the rest are uninhabitable,” he said.
Rescue teams in Jenderis discovered Aya on Monday afternoon, more than 10 hours after the earthquake, while digging through the rubble of the five-story apartment building where her parents lived.
Buried under cement, the baby was still connected by her umbilical cord to her mother, Afraa Abu Hadiya, who was dead along with her husband and four other children. The baby was rushed to a hospital in the nearby city of Afrin.
Abu Hadiya probably gave birth to the girl and then died a few hours before they were discovered, says Dr. Hani Maarouf from Afrin's Cihan Hospital. “We named her Aya, so we could stop calling her a newborn baby,” explains Maarouf. The little girl's state of health is improving day by day and there is no damage to her spine, as initially feared.
The UN agency for children, UNICEF, has ensured that it monitors the cases of children whose parents are missing or have died, providing food, clothing and medicine and coordinating with hospitals to trace extended family members who could care for them. .
In Turkey, the Ministry of Family and Social Services appealed to potential foster families to apply and announced that children whose families or relatives have not been found are currently being cared for in state institutions.
Near the opposition-held Syrian town of Azaz, a non-governmental organization has set up a makeshift orphanage that now houses about 40 children. But in many cases, the extended family intervenes. Syrians have experience dealing with the tragedy of parentless children: Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed in Syria's long-running civil war, which began in 2011, creating an unknown number of orphans.
Jana, the 7-year-old girl, was found by rescuers on Tuesday after 30 hours under the rubble of her family's home in Harem, a Syrian town near the Turkish border, explains Dr Alsfouk. Her mother, her father and three of her brothers have died.
She was taken to a hospital in the nearby town of Bab al-Hawa, which was already overcrowded. “In our children's section we have 24 beds and five incubators, but we have been receiving dozens of children. We barely have capacity. And we are the only hospital with a pediatric surgery section in the area, ”she indicates.
Visited by an AP journalist last Wednesday, Jana sobbed in pain and confusion on her bed, IV tubes flailing in her arms. Her face was covered in cuts. Later, an aunt arrived and the girl was handed over to her.
Alsfouk's own home has been destroyed and his family has moved in with friends. She for days she has been treating the avalanche of injured children, some of whom have not survived. “The whole experience has been horrible. It's hard to hold back the pain after trying to save a child but not being able to because then you have to move on to dozens of other children who need help,” she says.
For now the situation is too unclear to determine the number of orphans, says Dr Muheeb Qaddour, deputy head of the health department in Syria's Idlib province, the last hard-hit enclave of the country's opposition-controlled north-west. by the earthquake. “People are beginning to realize that there are now many children without families. There is great acceptance by society. Distant relatives take them in before they go to an orphanage. Unfortunately, it is only after the dust from the earthquake settles that things become clearer,” he concludes.
