The World Health Organisation Senior Emergency Officer, Adelheid Marschang, has said about 23 million people, including 1.4 million children, were likely to be exposed in both countries following the earthquake and its aftershocks that reduced thousands of buildings to rubble.
According to Marschang, Turkey has a strong capacity to respond to the crisis, but most supplies are likely to be passed through Syria, which is already dealing with a long-term humanitarian crisis, including civil war and cholera outbreaks, according to the UK Guardian.
She said, “This is a crisis on top of multiple crises in the affected region. All over Syria, the needs are the highest after nearly 12 years of protracted, complex crisis, while humanitarian funding continues to decline.”
The WHO said it was dispatching emergency supplies, including trauma and emergency surgical kits, and activating a network of emergency medical teams.
Also, the WHO director general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus stated , “It’s now a race against time. Every minute, every hour that passes, the chances of finding survivors alive diminishes.”
He said the WHO was especially concerned about areas of Turkey and Syria from where no information had emerged since Monday’s earthquake. “Damage mapping is one way to understand where we need to focus our attention,” he said.
So far, two children have been rescued from the ruins of a collapsed building.
One of the young boys was saved by emergency workers in Syria after being trapped for more than 20 hours.
Both children were displaced due to the Syrian civil war.