The first time Dima was rescued from the rubble of her partially collapsed home in northern Syria, she was 7 months pregnant. Lucky to be alive, she was taken to the hospital in Afrin run by the Syrian American Medical Society where she gave birth to her son, Adnan, last Monday.
Due to a lack of aid flowing into the rebel-held areas of Syria, Dima, her husband and Adnan had no choice but to return to the destroyed building, where they tried to create a warm haven for the newborn. “After I gave birth, we went back to the same house,” Dima says in a video of her story published on the SAMS Facebook account.
Just as the family had settled back in, an aftershock struck the area, causing the building to collapse further, trapping her, her infant, and her husband under the rubble a second time.
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She was rescued once more, this time in critical condition with injuries to her lower back. The baby, by then severely dehydrated and suffering from jaundice, along with Dima, were rushed back to the hospital, where the infant is now in critical condition, but responding to treatment.
“Adnan’s condition... has significantly improved,” the pediatrician treating the child told the BBC this week. “We are just feeding him and [providing] the rest of his needs through intravenous drips.”
Dima has been released from the hospital, and she and her husband are now living in a tent camp along with nine nieces and nephews who lost parents in the disaster. More than 36,000 people are known to have been killed, more than 20,000 injured, and tens of thousands more left homeless in the 7.8 magnitude earthquake that struck last Monday.
Dima travels to the hospital daily to visit and feed her baby despite her own injuries, SAMS said, warning that the premature return to unsafe structures can lead to “catastrophic” outcomes. Only sporadic aid has reached the rebel-held regions of northern Syria, most of it held up by the government led by Bashar al-Assad, whose forces continue to keep the area cut off.
