Syria’s medical infrastructure is on the “brink of collapse”, 50 leading health care experts have warned, with more than half of the country’s hospitals already destroyed or damaged in the civil war, the Telegraph reported.

Medical experts, including the chiefs of major international aid agencies and three Nobel Prize winners, made a heartfelt appeal urging all combatants in Syria to spare hospitals and clinics and to allow doctors and nurses to operate freely, in what they called “the worst humanitarian crises since the end of the Cold War”.

“Systematic assaults on medical professionals, facilities and patients are breaking Syria’s health-care system and making it nearly impossible for civilians to receive essential medical services,” they said in an open letter published by The Lancet.
“As doctors and health professionals we urgently demand that medical colleagues in Syria be allowed and supported to treat patients, save lives, and alleviate suffering without the fear of attacks or reprisals.”

In less than three years of civil war, 37 per cent of Syrian hospitals have been destroyed, and a further 20 per cent severely damaged, according to figures released by the World Health organisation.

The Violations Documentation Centre, estimates that 469 health workers are currently imprisoned, and about 15,000 doctors have been forced to flee abroad, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. As the open letter highlighted, of the 5,000 physicians in Aleppo before the conflict started, only 36 remain.