700 cases of drinking water poisoning in Daraa

ARK News… About 700 civilians were poisoned during the past ten days, as a result of polluted drinking water in the Al-Shajara town of the Yarmouk Basin area in the western countryside of Daraa.

Local Syrian websites quoted a medical source as saying that the problem of drinking water pollution has recently worsened in the Al-Shajara town and a number of surrounding villages, causing harm to more than 700 people, most of them children and women, amid the absence of preventive measures by the Syrian regime, indicating the presence of impurities and waste inside. Drinking water that reaches civilians' homes, causing them to become infected with hepatitis A.

The source added that the symptoms that appeared on the infected people who were transferred to the medical clinic and pharmacies in the town of Al-Shajara and the neighboring villages were in the head and abdomen, yellowing of the face, and a state of extreme body fatigue, and treatment was provided to them through available serums and drug injections.

He pointed out that the problem of water pollution in the Shajara district is due to the contamination of the water source, as water is pumped to the Shajara district and the surrounding villages from the pump in the town of Ain al-Zikr, which in turn draws water from the station and wells of the town of Khirbet Ghazala.

The townspeople held the local authorities affiliated with the regime, including the governorate council, the medical system, and the water corporation, responsible for this incident, for neglecting to inspect the water networks, and for ignoring the problem.

Despite the increase in cases of poisoning and infections with viral hepatitis, the local authorities were content to send therapeutic materials, amid promises to send mobile medical vehicles to the region to treat the cases.

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