WHO team in southern Turkey to help Syrian victims

By Ismihan Ozguven

HATAY, Turkey (AA) - A team of World Health Organization (WHO) arrived Thursday in Turkey's southern Hatay province to observe and contribute the ongoing medical treatment of the victims of Syrian chemical attack.

Hatay province’s Health Director Umit Mutlu Tiryaki said they shared the details of treatment procedure with the WHO team, including its representative in southeastern Gaziantep province Anette Heinzelmann.

"We shared how we run [the system] from the very beginning, how we reach those victims and offer them treatment, and also what kind of measures we took for them," Tiryaki said.

The work conducted in Turkey should be a model for other countries, he quoted the WHO team members as saying.

Heinzelmann, on her part, said it was such an organized work carried out in Turkey including how patients were reached and supplied clinical operations.

The team will also visit the patients but will not cross the border to Syria for security reasons, Heinzelmann added.

The use of sarin gas in Syria’s Idlib attack on April 4 killed more than 100 civilians and injured around 500 in the opposition-held town of Khan Sheikhun.

A day after the strike, Turkey invited WHO to send experts to jointly investigate the attack. WHO officials arrived in Adana province to carry out autopsies on three Syrian bodies at the Adana Forensic Medicine Institute.

On Tuesday, White House officials confirmed that the victims’ symptoms were consistent with “sarin exposure”.