training

Year family medicine was established: 2006 – Family Physician Syndicate (Garabedian, 2018)

Type of Training: Residency (Garabedian, 2018)

Length of Training: 4 years (Garabedian, 2018)

Number of institutions that offer family medicine: 2 (Osman et al., 2011)

Number of family medicine residents graduating each year: 24 (Osman et al., 2011)

practice

Family doctor to patients ratio: 1176.5 per 100 000

1:85,123 (Osman et al., 2011)

Physician to population ratio: 140 per 100 000 (International Statistics, n.d.).

DALY: 13,660 per 100,000 individuals (Due to all Causes).

Life Expectancy:

• Females 2017: 77.4 years

• Males 2017: 76.5 years

Mortality rate 2017:

• 2017 Males: 265 per 1,000 male adults.

• 2017 Females: 65.4 per 1,000 female adults.

Infant Immunization-HepB3: % of 1-year-old children received: 47%

College of Family Physicians (Y or N):

• No

training

It takes at least six years of school and training to become a family doctor in Syria (Garabedian, 2018). One of the many goals that the Syrian government is trying to implement is to ensure work for all family physicians immediately following graduation and to have at least one family physician in every health centre around the country.

practice

Family physicians perform routine check-ups and health monitoring (Garabedian, 2018) They are not considered gatekeepers as there is no referral system in place. Moreover, all specialists are considered primary care deliverers for similar reasons; patients can directly visit most specialists of their choosing without any prior referral (Garabedian).

Syria is quite unique due to the ongoing war. There is great variation between its cities in terms of training, service and health. The city of Aleppo reportedly contains 6 million people who are being served by only 25 family doctors (Garabedian, 2018). Although the healthcare prior to the onset of war was well-received, there has been a steady decline in quality and quantity since the start of the war (Garabedian, 2018).