Written by Muayad Al Ashkar and translate by “Jihad Al Haj
“Local media reports quoted Ali Khalouf, the mayor of Hayalin in the countryside of Masyaf in Hama, as saying that the town recorded more than 100 cases of hepatitis A, most of them students. According to him, the reason is due to the overlap between drinking water and sewage water in the western part of the village on the road between Masyaf and Al-Qadmus
Rafiqah Salama – Director of Hayalin Secondary School – says that the infection appeared on one of the students since the beginning of the first semester. The student took a sick leave for two weeks and then no other cases appeared until now, where the number of infections in the school has reached more than 30 cases that began to spread among students. Salama explained that the health and water directorates took samples from school tanks frequently and all samples were healthy
On his part, Dr. Dureid Al-Hasan, director of Hayalin clinic, confirmed that the high number of infections is due to lack of awareness among families about the danger of the disease. Families send their children to schools while they are infected with hepatitis A, which leads to spreading the disease among their classmates in schools, resulting in high numbers of infections in the village. Al-Hasan added that it is likely that infections are due to infection and have nothing to do with drinking water as they have not been given any information about samples taken from tanks in town
“Dr. Ghayath Abdullah – a pseudonym – spoke to Hama Today newspaper that it is possible for a disease to spread and spread in Syria and almost end without even announcing its existence. This is what usually happens with official medical authorities in the Syrian government, but when the official media admits to registering dozens of cases of viral hepatitis, this means that it has lost control of the spread of this disease
Abdullah added that the town of Hayalin lacks a laboratory for analyzing samples to confirm people’s infection, and that the samples collected are sent to Masyaf for analysis. In most cases, they are not well preserved and therefore deteriorate and cannot be relied upon to build a real picture of the spread of the disease
Abu Marwan – a fifty-year-old resident of Hayalin – says that his daughter was infected with viral hepatitis before the New Year, and after her recovery, her brothers were infected in turn, ten days apart from each other. That is, his three children who were infected with the disease were mixing with friends at school before they were informed of the disease
For his part, Dr. Saad Shomal, head of the Public Health Department in Hama Health Directorate, said that the holiday period led to mixing of patients with their surroundings to a great extent, which according to him led to a significant increase in the number of infections during the current period
According to Dr. Shomal, the samples taken from schools and water tanks in the village were sound, but the samples taken from tanks in homes that are often sourced from wells or water transported through tankers to homes were contaminatet
Shomal claimed that the water in the village is sound according to reports received by him and that the mixing that occurred in the western part of Hayalin between drinking water and sewage was caused by an earthquake according to his expression
