More than 4.3M Syrian children need humanitarian aid

According to the charity Save the Children the three year long war in Syria has taken a devastating toll on children's health in the country. The report, A Devastating Toll, indicates that due to the three years of violence nearly 10,000 children's lives have been lost in a direct link to the war. Horrifying stories continue to cripple the country and child mortality rates continue to increase at an insurmountable rate. "The extent of the decline in Syria's health system is demonstrated in many horrific ways, including children having limbs amputated because the clinics they present to don't have necessary equipment to treat them," said the report. As the humanitarian crisis has taken ahold of nearly every part of the country there are certain neighborhoods that are strategic footholds for the rebel forces, these specific cites have been cut off from food and medical aid entirely. Residents in Yarmouk ,(a town near Damascus), statistics state that nearly 60 percent of the 20,000 residents are suffering from malnutrition and many have dies of starvation. Hospitals in this region have closed and the rebel groups have looted what was left of an already dwindled medical supply. It is not this region alone that suffers and due to the war there has been a worry that a complete collapse of the health care system may be soon to follow. Vaccination program have all but stopped which has resulted in a reemergence of polio. Poor living conditions and water sanitation issues have also resulted in a drastic increase in parasitic diseases as well. The drastic increase in outbreaks have health care officials worried that viruses like polio and others may start to reimage on a global scale, threatening neighboring countries that have tentative health care statuses as well. Syria is a grave concern for the international community but I cannot help but feel that the situation is so tragic that the international community does not know what is the right course of action at this point. The US has had little involvement and it has seemed to lack the incentive to intervene and muddy itself with yet another "messy" conflict. I cant help but wonder if the US had a more strategic interest in Syria if we would take more of an interest in finding a solution to this surmounting problem? In a larger question is the US not intervening because it is being pragmatic or are we purely acting out our realistic model of statecraft? Is it because the US gains no strategic benefit from an intervention in Syria the true reason we are not intervening or a combination of both?

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/3/10/report-more-than43msyrianchildrenneedhumanitarianaid.html

Katelyn Krumreich