Syrians, some suffering from the “Aleppo button”, queue at a clinic in the northern city of Aleppo.
ALEPPO: The latest affliction to hit weary residents of Aleppo is written on their faces. Some call it the “Aleppo button”, a welt caused by leishmaniasis, an illness that is sweeping the Syrian city.
Transmitted by flies, the parasitic disease arrived along with the thousands of Syrians displaced from their homes by fighting.
Mohamed, 11, first saw the unsightly welts caused by the disease appear on his face three months ago, and they keep growing. “It’s a fly that comes from pomegranates, it bites you and you catch the Aleppo button,” he says.
The disease, which is not fatal but weakens the immune system, was largely confined to the countryside of Aleppo province until the civil war. But as the conflict forces people from their homes and into the city, once Syria’s economic hub, the disease has taken hold in Aleppo like never before.
“Between 200 and 250 people with leishmaniasis come for treatment” each day, according to 23-year-old Ali, a medical volunteer at a makeshift clinic in the city.
Most of those affected are children, with Ali saying they represent around 50 percent of those with leishmaniasis in Aleppo.
To be protected from the disease, people should at the very least be sleeping under mosquito nets, Ali says.
With summer approaching and the number of flies expected to multiply, one former physics student has decided to take matters into his own hands.
Rabie, 30, working with his cousin and a friend, tours the Tariq al-Bab neighbourhood armed with a strange machine that spits out white smoke.
“It’s petrol mixed with insecticide,” he said, a thin surgical mask on his face.
AFP
