After years of war, economic collapse, and sanctions, Syria’s healthcare system is in critical condition. With government resources stretched thin, foreign aid and investment have become the main hope for restoring essential services. But experts caution while international partnerships can help, they are unlikely to fully rebuild a sustainable national health system without long-term planning and substantial domestic engagement.
The Syrian Ministry of Health recently signed an agreement with Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) to expand cooperation on medical and humanitarian projects. The deal includes setting up specialized burn treatment units in five provinces, creating primary healthcare centres, and improving emergency response capacity.
Meanwhile, the World Health Organization (WHO) has launched an urgent appeal for over $56 million to relieve pressure on facilities, half of which are currently out of service. Germany and Syria have also agreed to strengthen hospital capacity through technical and financial support. Italy’s development agency pledged €3 million via the WHO to improve access to basic healthcare, develop disease surveillance systems, rehabilitate public health laboratories in Damascus and Daraa, and support the digital transformation of health information systems.
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Funding Gaps and Workforce Exodus
Dr. Firas Shabo, professor of financial management at Bahçeşehir University in Istanbul, warns that Syria’s healthcare coverage is “very low,” with about 40% of facilities destroyed and many of the rest barely functional. Around 60% of medical professionals have emigrated, worsening the crisis.
Shabo says that previous economic sanctions continue to cast a long shadow over Syria’s medical sector, and that their partial lifting has brought no tangible improvement due to persistent bureaucratic hurdles. He also pointed to a vast gap in both service quality and funding, estimating that the sector still needs roughly 90% of its required financing. Most existing aid, he stressed, is geared toward emergency response rather than building a sustainable health system.
Shabo called for forging strong partnerships with international institutions, securing long-term development financing, and significantly involving the private sector. Only then, he argued, could Syria achieve a real transformation, moving from temporary, stopgap measures to the creation of a balanced, fully functional healthcare system.
The pressures are enormous: according to the World Health Organization, just 59% of Syria’s hospitals and 46% of its primary care centres are operating at full capacity. For many families, treatment costs are prohibitive, and access to essential medicines remains severely limited.
Emergency Aid vs. Systemic Reconstruction
Mustafa Mohammed Al-Sheikh, head of legal affairs at Idlib’s health directorate, notes that most current aid is short-term, covering mobile clinics, routine vaccinations, and essential drugs, rather than infrastructure rebuilding. The health sector, he says, needs massive investment to reconstruct facilities destroyed by years of bombardment and to modernize equipment.
He argues that international assistance must include knowledge transfer, advances in medical technology, and the provision of modern, high-quality equipment to hospitals and health centres, with fair distribution based on population density. Al-Sheikh called for innovative financing strategies, most notably stronger public–private partnerships, incentives for direct foreign investment in the health sector, the launch of long-term reconstruction funding programs, and an active role for civil society organizations in implementing sustainable health projects.
He concluded by noting that Syria’s health sector continues to face acute shortages of modern medical equipment, medicines, and supplies, problems exacerbated by the sanctions previously imposed on the Syrian state.
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Infrastructure Collapse and Equipment Shortages
For his part, lawyer Mohammed Haj Hussein, based in Idlib, highlighted the severe challenges facing the region’s healthcare sector, stressing the urgent need to rehabilitate its infrastructure. He explained that many medical facilities and hospitals have suffered near-total destruction, requiring extensive reconstruction efforts.
He noted that improving the health sector depends largely on the scale of investments and funding available, as well as on the seriousness of international donors in meeting the required level of support. Partial aid, he argued, may improve services to some degree but falls far short of addressing the overall crisis.
According to Haj Hussein, genuine international partnerships backed by a real commitment to action could create a healthcare system capable of meeting more than 80% of the region’s needs. However, he criticized current aid as “far too modest” compared to the massive scale of the challenges.
He also emphasized the importance of adopting a self-reliance strategy in Syria, boosting the use of local resources and creating a foundation capable of meeting a significant share of healthcare needs without total dependence on foreign assistance.
