'It's all a lie': hesitancy hampers vaccine drive in war-scarred Syrian area

FILE PHOTO: Youssef Ramadan, talks to his son as he sits inside a tent at Teh camp for internally displaced Syrians, in northern Idlib, Syria, May 5, 2021. REUTERS/Khalil Ashawi

IDLIB, Syria (Reuters) - In northwest Syria, where healthcare is rudimentary and those displaced by war are packed into squalid camps, the arrival of vaccines to fight COVID-19 should have been cause for relief.

Instead, a U.N.-backed vaccination campaign has met with suspicion and mistrust by an exhausted population who feel betrayed by their government and abandoned by the international community after a decade of conflict that ruined their lives.