The doctors, nurses and aid workers rebuilding Syria | Rola Hallam
TED Talks Daily
TED
4.1 • 12.1K Ratings
🗓️ 15 May 2018
⏱️ 7 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Local humanitarians are beacons of light in the darkness of war, says humanitarian aid entrepreneur and TED Fellow Rola Hallam. She's working to help responders on the ground in devastated communities like Syria, where the destruction of health care is being used as a weapon of war. One of her campaigns achieved a global first: a crowdfunded hospital. Since it opened in 2017, the aptly named Hope Hospital has treated thousands of children. "Local humanitarians have the courage to persist, to dust themselves off from the wreckage and to start again, risking their lives to save others," Hallam says. "We can match their courage by not looking away or turning our backs."
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | This TED Talk features humanitarian aid entrepreneur Rola Halam, |
| 0:05.1 | recorded live at TED 2018. |
| 0:09.8 | Five hospitals in Aleppo have been bombed. |
| 0:13.9 | That was a text message that I received on a dark winter night in November 2016. |
| 0:19.8 | One of them was a children's hospital, |
| 0:22.9 | run by my Syrian colleagues at the Independent Doctors Association, IDA. |
| 0:28.0 | It was the sixth time it had been bombed. |
| 0:31.9 | I watched in horror, heartbreaking footage of the head nurse Malak |
| 0:35.0 | in the aftermath of the bombing, |
| 0:36.8 | grabbing premature babies out of their incubators |
| 0:39.3 | desperate to get them to safety |
| 0:41.3 | before she broke down in tears. |
| 0:44.3 | And I felt devastated. |
| 0:47.3 | Fellow humanitarian and I have spent blood, sweat and tears, |
| 0:50.3 | rebuilding hospitals so that our patients may live, not die. |
| 0:57.5 | And through this work, I made a discovery. |
| 1:01.8 | The reason that people survive in crisis |
| 1:04.5 | is because of the remarkable work of the people in crisis themselves. |
| 1:10.0 | People survive because of the local doctors, nurses and aid workers who are from the very heart of the people in crisis themselves. People survive because of the local doctors, nurses and aid workers |
| 1:13.6 | who are from the very heart of the affected community, |
| 1:16.6 | the people who dare to work where others can't or won't. |
| 1:20.6 | People survive because of people like Malak, |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from TED, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of TED and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.