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IDLIB, Syria — Eighteen-year-old Ahmed Mendoora is lying on a narrow hospital bed as a doctor carefully examines his arm. It’s been five years since a bombing in the northwest province of Idlib shattered a bone in his left elbow, leaving it permanently bent in an L-shape. 

The scars from the skin graft used to cover his wounds are a permanent reminder of that day. Even with routine physical therapy, doctors say the nerve damage is too severe for Mendoora to ever recover the full range of motion in his arm. 

Mendoora is among the more than 7,100 patients who receive free medical care each month at Idlib Central Hospital, one of 12 hospitals in the impoverished country operated by the Syrian American Medical Society, a US-based medical charity. Patients travel from across Syria, including some from four hours away in the the capital Damascus, to receive treatment in Idlib from SAMS doctors, who are trained by their American counterparts and have access to specialized equipment that remains out of reach for most of the war-ravaged country’s hospitals.