Despite unrest, northwest Syria shows baby boom
Births are rising in northwest Syria, including in the displacement camps despite conditions often not being suitable for babies and mothers.
Civilians in northwestern Syria are battling difficult economic conditions, amid high unemployment rates that exceed 85%, and the depreciation of the Syrian pound against the dollar. However, this did not stop a baby boom in the area.
In 2021, 76,663 births were recorded, marking a 22.8% increase from 2020, according to the Health Information System Unit (HIS), based in northwest Syria and tasked with collecting data related to the health field to be provided to relevant organizations working in the area.
According to statistics by the local Syrian Response Coordinators Team, from the last quarter of 2020 the total population in northwest Syria — Idlib governorate, Aleppo western countryside and Hama western countryside, with the exception of the northern and eastern Aleppo countryside areas — reached more than 4.2 million people, including 702,507 children below the age of five. The population growth rate reached 21.19/1,000 as opposed to a mortality rate of 5.56/1,000.
The director of the health directorate in the city of Afrin in the northern countryside of Aleppo, affiliated with the Syrian opposition's self-styled interim government, told Al-Monitor that the directorate does not have accurate statistics on the number of births in the area, because many health institutions operating in northwest Syria are not directly affiliated with it and thus many births go unregistered in official records.
