6:39
The toxin used was sarin, a United Nations-designated weapon of mass destruction that attacks the nervous system. The attack, described by then-U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon as \"the \"most significant confirmed use of chemical weapons against civilians since\" 1988, killed 1,429 people, including at least 426 children, according to the U.S. government.
As \"The Cave\" documents, Ballour led the hospital through all kinds of attacks, including another chemical weapons attack in March 2018 and direct airstrikes \"20 or more times,\" she told ABC News.
Right there with her was the film's director, Feras Fayyad. The Syrian filmmaker has been jailed and tortured by the Assad regime, but he continues to risk his life to tell stories of the conflict's victims and heroes, including his 2017 Oscar-nominated documentary, \"The Last Men in Aleppo.\"
Fayyad and his team's footage from the trenches with Ballour became \"The Cave,\" which was produced in conjunction with National Geographic Documentary Films. The Walt Disney Co. is the parent company of National Geographic and ABC News.
Eventually, the constant attacks by Assad and Russian warplanes forced Ballour to leave Ghouta. She moved to northern Syria in 2018 before crossing the border to Turkey, where she currently lives as a refugee.
![\"PHOTO:](\"http://a.abcnews.com/images/International/ballour-interview-01-abc-jc-200203_hpMain_4x3t_384.jpg\")
\"Now I hope by being a voice, I can help others get to a safe place too,\" Ballour said after arriving in New York Sunday.
With support from National Geographic, Ballour received a U.S. visa after months of effort. For the first time since fleeing Syria, she was able to leave Turkey last month and travel from France, where she was the first non-European to be granted the Council of Europe's Raoul Wallenberg Prize for extraordinary humanitarian achievements.
She will travel to Los Angeles later this week to attend the Academy Awards ceremony with Fayyad and other members of the film's team.
While in the U.S., Ballour will tour the country to raise awareness of the ongoing violence in Syria and to raise funds for her Al Amal Fund, which advocates for and helps educate and equip female medical workers in conflict zones.
There are many who Ballour had to leave behind in Ghouta at the Cave. She said some of the staff who stayed behind had been arrested and one doctor was killed in prison. They are all still on her mind.
\"I have a lot of memories -- most of them are bad memories. I dream a lot of these things sometimes. I woke up at midnight, crying, because I hear bombing or something like that,\" she said. \"It's [a] very bad situation now in Syria.\"
ABC News's Candace Smith contributed to this report.
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