“WHO” chief visits rebel-held Syria for first time after quake

World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus urged the international community to help earthquake-hit northwest Syria, on his first ever visit to rebel-held areas of the war-ravaged country.

The WHO chief had already travelled to government-controlled Aleppo and Damascus the same week as the February 6 disaster that killed more than 50,000 people in Turkey and Syria.

Tedros visited several hospitals and a shelter near the Turkish border for people displaced by the disaster.

Turkish-backed officials in Syria have put the death toll in rebel-held areas at 4,537, while the Syrian government has said 1,414 people were killed in areas under its control.

The UN has launched a $397 million appeal to help quake victims in Syria, but Tedros warned that "we are not getting as much as what is needed for this emergency".

"The people of northwest Syria need the assistance of the international community to recover and rebuild," Tedros told reporters.

"I call on the international community, governments, philanthropists, individuals, to dig deep," added Tedros, the highest-ranking United Nations official to visit the rebel-held area since civil war broke out almost 12 years ago.

The quake came nearly 12 years into Syria's civil war which devastated swathes of the country, killed nearly half a million people and displaced millions more.