StemCell Therapy

A chemical weapon attack in Syria on Tuesday killed some 70 people, including sleeping children, according to multiple eyewitness accounts. Hundreds more were sickened.

But the latest use of the weapons of mass destruction, illegally banned internationally, has highlighted the difficulty in treating victims of such attacks.

The nerve agents used in Tuesdays airstrike in the rural province of Idleb were from the family of organophosphorus chemicals, according to the World Health Organization. Some sources indicate it may be sarin gas.

The WHO immediately dispatched shipments of Atropine, a belladonna alkaloid administered to acute poisonings like that of sarin gas, as well as steroids to treat the symptoms among the children and civilians who were affected.

But area hospitals were also damaged and couldnt accept all the wounded, according to the WHO. Al Rahma Hospital was damaged this week, and temporarily nonfunctional and the Maara Hospital was extensively damaged by ordnance on Sunday. Accordingly, many of the patients have been shipped to facilities in southern Turkey.

More drugs are on their way from WHO storage locations in Turkey, WHO added.

The WHO had stores of Atropine on hand near the scene in Idleb. The preparations were a result of a series of attacks since the first chemical weapons usage in 2012. New protocols, protective equipment and even lessons to Syrian civilians have attempted to limit casualties. Last year, the WHO trained 200 clinicians on emergency triage for chemical exposure, and an additional 65 doctors were trained in northern Syria. Most of those doctors were from Idleb.

Previous attacks have featured chlorine gas. But this attack is believed to have employed sarin, according to experts with Amnesty International.

The White House and the United Kingdom have both condemned the attack as an offensive by the Assad Regime, which has previously employed chemical weapons against various rebel factions in the civil war, which has raged since 2011.

Amnesty International described the usage as an air-based chemical attack that is a war crime. They called on the United Nations to do something about it.

Security Council members, and in particular Russia and China, have displayed callous disregard for human life in Syria by repeatedly failing to pass resolutions that would allow for punitive measures to be taken against those committing war crimes and other serious violations in Syria, said Anna Neistat, senior director of research at Amnesty International.

Russian officials and Assad supporters have contended that a conventional strike on a rebel stockpile of chemical weapons is what caused the casualties. Most agencies have rejected that explanation.

The attack occurred in Khan Sheikhoun, a small town on the Damascus Highway, and one of the few remaining opposition holdouts in northeastern Syria. A nurse at the Al Rahma hospital told Amnesty International he was having his morning coffee at 6:20 a.m., when he and other staff members heard far-off thumps. Just 15 minutes later, the gruesome parade of victims started arriving.

The smell reached us here in in the center; it smelled like rotten food, the nurse said. Weve received victims of chlorine attacks before this was completely different. Victims had vomit from the nose and mouth, a dark yellow color, sometimes turning to brown. Paralysis in respiratory functions children were dying faster than adults because of this. We tried injections but it just didnt work. Victims were unable to swallow, they were unconscious, completely unresponsive.

Recent studies have indicated that emergency interventions for chemical attacks are lacking in modern medicine. A study in the journal Chemico-Biological Interactions published in 2014 found that therapeutic options are limited as victims essentially choke to death on sarin or other agents but stem cells may be a treatment option of the future.

See the rest here:
Chemical Weapons in Syria Overburden Already-tattered Medical Infrastructure - Laboratory Equipment

This entry was posted on April 5, 2017 at 9:43 pm and is filed under Death by Stem Cells. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed. |