ASSAD REGIME REFUSED POLIO VACCINATION IN DEIR AL ZOUR

The United Nations has announced that a long-delayed peace conference on Syria planned for January 22 in Geneva, will actually be held in the Swiss town of Montreux. The conference has been moved “due to logistical reasons” because of a lack of hotel space in Geneva. Meanwhile, public health researchers have found that the Syrian government excluded Deir al-Zour, the Syrian province where polio broke out this year, from a 2012 vaccination campaign. The World Health Organization discovered 13 cases of polio in the province in November. The Syrian regime claimed that most of the residents had fled the area, however hundreds of thousands of people had remained. A British surgeon has reportedly died while imprisoned in Syria. The 32-year-old orthopedic surgeon, Abbas Khan, had traveled to Aleppo to help civilians, and was detained by Syrian authorities for over a year.