Dr Anas Al-Kassem sneaks into the Turkish-Syrian border at night with truckloads of equipment. He and his colleagues takeover houses and set up clandestine facilities, risking arrest or worse from armed forces and police.
He performs dozens of secret surgeries each week, sewing up horrific blast and bullet wounds, treating concussions and often amputating damaged limbs. When he's not saving lives, by smuggling medical supplies and expertise into his native Syria, the 38-year-old doctor lives in the sprawling suburbs of Toronto, where he works as a trauma specialist at a state-of-the-art Canadian hospital near his home.
Every few weeks, for much of this year, Dr Al-Kassem has been commuting to his native Syria from his adopted country, Canada. He leads efforts to set up field hospitals in war-torn areas, makeshift clinics that offer basic trauma treatments so wounded people survive long enough to get to well-equipped medical facilities in neighbouring countries.
"They're [the field hospitals] are inside ordinary houses," he says. "We do triage in the living room, sterilise instruments in the kitchen. There's an OR [operating room] in a bedroom and upstairs, some rooms for patients."
Dr Al-Kassem uses clandestine operating rooms to treat wounded Syrians [Anas Al-Kassem/Al Jazeera]
Source Aljazeera 16 Aug 2012 10:59
