BALADI NEWS
On the January 15, the Council of Europe announced that the 2020 Raoul Wallenberg Prize will be awarded to Amani Ballour, a Syrian doctor, for the major role she played in saving hundreds of civilians who had been injured as a result the conflict in Syria at an underground hospital that she ran in Eastern Ghouta between 2012 and 2018.
In a press conference, the Secretary-General of the Council of Europe, Marija Pejčinović Burić, said, “Dr. Amani Ballour is a shining example of the empathy, virtue, and honor that can flourish even in the worst circumstances”, adding that the hospital that Dr. Ballour had established “became a beacon of hope and safety for many besieged civilians. There, Dr. Ballour risked her own safety and security to help those in the greatest need. She and others acted day after day to save the lives of so many people, including children suffering from the effects of chemical weapons”.
For me to be here today is an incredible honor and a testimony that innocent Syrian people must not, AND are not, being forgotten. Dr. Amani wrote on Facebook.
Dr. Ballour was 30 years old when she graduated with a medical degree from Damascus University in mid-2012. She had planned on specializing in pediatrics, but the uprising against the regime changed that; she decided to become a field doctor instead.
She told Asharq Al-Awsat about joining the groups of field doctors after the opposition movement was militarized. She says that she remembered the details “as though they had just happened” and that she would remember the events of the 12th of December 2012, for the rest of her life. “It was the first day that I worked as a field doctor. At the time, I was working in the Tuberculosis Hospital in my hometown, Kafr Batna”, she says. There, she worked as a doctor and assistant surgeon throughout the period during which the siege was imposed on her hometown. Due to her dedication and success, she became the director of the hospital leading a team of 100 doctors, nurses, and volunteers after only four years.
“Because of my experience and my ability to bear the great burden of this responsibility, I managed to implement measures to meet all the daily challenges that we faced,” she says.
Dr. Ballour remembers the 16th of March, 2018, well. On that day, the Assad regime and the Russian Air Force committed a massacre killing 70 people and injuring hundreds as airstrikes hit civilians as they were trying to escape the neighboring town of Joumria.