Doctor, Please Help!

When it was over, he said, he stepped into a shower to wash off the blood and cried for over an hour.

Stress does that to people. Even doctors, who are supposed to step back from emotion and the personal, to immerse themselves completely in their medical professionalism, their purpose to heal, to assist people in physical duress to the best of their abilities as trained physicians. If anyone might be seen as performing his professional role without bias, it should be a doctor.

For doctors, in pursuit of their medical goals, treat the ill, the wounded, the dying without concern of who they are.

Of course there is the recent reports out of Bahrain that doctors treating Shia protesters who had earned the ire of their Sunni rulers, were being singled out for punishment as traitors to the regime. Doctors and nurses and other medical staff who were accused of fomenting problems for the autocratic regime, the minority sect oppressing the majority-sect Shia.

These medical professionals were arrested and are to stand trial. They are themselves Shia, little wonder they responded to the appeal.

The United Nations Human Rights Council - a generally blighted group if there ever was one, among whom Syria and Libya among others were members in good standing - has issued a report with the allegation that in Syria enemies of the al-Assad regime who were injured by government forces, were further abused by the military posing as medical personnel when they were taken to hospitals for treatment.

But it was not merely guards posing as doctors, but also evidently legitimate medical personnel who resorted to ill-treatment of wounded civilians. "Everybody would start beating them, including doctors and nurses", said one guard who had worked at a hospital.

The alternative then, was for doctors willing to place their own security on the line in order to respect their pledge as doctors to serve those in need of medical attention irrespective of who they are, what they represent, to set up medical operations in discreet, secret locations.

These underground 'hospitals', would appear in abandoned houses, where there were scarce medical supplies available, other than smuggling through what little that could be obtained, through sources in Lebanon. And then there is the story of 26-year-old Dr. Ebrahim Othman, the founder of an underground medical network in Damascus. He was not beloved of the regime, and he was killed for his indiscretions.

Witnesses and those who belong to human rights groups insist that any who attempt to assist wounded protesters themselves come under fire. "Anyone who is treating the wounded is regarded as if they are carrying a gun against the regime", explained a member of the Homs Revolutionary Council who works to co-ordinate supplies for the city's clandestine clinics.

Those who have allowed themselves out of desperation for medical treatment to be admitted to hospitals are beaten, and imprisoned. Some of them never emerge alive; their families are contacted and ordered to receive their bodies. The corpses showing the results of torture. And then there are the innocents caught in the crossfire; young children shot, or imprisoned and tortured.

And the Arab League observer mission, members themselves dodging gunfire and hesitating to venture too far afield where the regime's tanks are encircling neighbourhoods known to harbour the more ardent of the committed protesters, find a situation that is troubling to a degree, but nothing to get too excited about. At least they're not too dreadfully excited about it.

Doubtless they will report back to the Arab League that Syrian protesters are a hysterical lot, having fallen prey to mass paranoia.