Russia's Lesser Known Heroes: Meet the Emercom Doctors Saving Lives in Aleppo

The Aleppo deployment was announced last month, when President Vladimir Putin ordered sending a mobile field hospital to the city.

Arriving in the country in early December, doctors from Emercom's Tsentrospas medical team quickly began their work to assist city residents. On Monday, EMERCOM reported on the results of their work thus far, calculating that they have treated over 1,250 people, including 462 women and 375 children. Between Sunday and Monday alone, 63 people appealed to them for help of which 22 patients were taken into surgery, with the other 41 given therapeutic assistance.

Soon after their deployment, Tsentrospas's first order of business was to help treat patients suffering from very basic ailments, including colds and dehydration. Personnel took note of the fact that civilians in the city had been subjected to starvation, and most hadn't had access to any sort of medical assistance for a long period of time. Personnel soon handed out medicines to treat illnesses, and provided prescription drugs to patients following consultations with the help of translators. 

The therapeutic care provided sometimes includes putting patients under observation, assigning them follow-up visits.

According to EMERCOM, the most commonly recorded ailments include cases of children suffering from respiratory infections. Festering wounds that haven't been treated properly due to the lack of professional care are another problem.

As Viktor Belinsky, an anesthesiologist part of the Tsentrospas team, explained, "a wound that is not treated in time results in an infection, and a number of other diseases, worsening the condition of victims, which eventually requires hospitalization. The medical assistance provided to refugees by our doctors allows them, on an outpatient basis and without hospitalization, to receive antibiotic therapy and return to normal health, preventing complications."

Doctors have also engaged in treating patients suffering from shrapnel and bullet wounds. "Just the other day, Tsentrospas doctor Sergei Sozinov operated on a 25-year-old woman, removing a metal shard from her left thigh," an EMERCOM statement said.

Doctors have also reported treating patients for a variety of other ailments, including arthritis, bronchitis, pneumonia, hypertension, and coronary diseases.

EMERCOM's Tsentrospas airmobile hospital features 14 unified, 2 technological, and 4 transitional modules, along with 18 gateway modules, enabling them to work in sanitary conditions with up to 50 patients at a time, and to provide out-patient assistance to 200 people a day. The facility includes a department of admissions, as well as surgical, resuscitation, intensive care, obstetrics-gynecology, diagnosis and outpatient sections.

Tsentrospas proudly emphasizes that Aleppo residents have warmly thanked the Russian doctors for the real assistance they are providing, adding that they appreciate that Russia has not abandoned them in Syria's time of need. 

Last week, a delegation led by World Health Organization Syria department head Elizabeth Hoff and Aleppo Department of Health head Ziad Hajj-Taha inspected the work of the Tsentrospas hospital. Aquainting themselves with its operation, the officials thanked EMERCOM for providing medical assistance to the victims of the conflict, and agreed to cooperate closely with the Russian doctors to provide all the medical assistance necessary to the city's residents.