The World Health Organization (WHO) said it conducted a mission to the Israeli army-occupied al-Chifa hospital in Gaza on Saturday and was working on an evacuation plan for the facility, which it described as a “death zone”.
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According to the WHO, whose experts spent an hour in the huge hospital complex, there were still 25 caregivers and 291 patients staying on Saturday, including 32 babies in critical condition, 22 on dialysis and two in intensive care.
Mission members described the hospital as a “death zone” where the situation was “desperate,” the WHO reported in a statement.
“WHO and its partners are urgently developing plans for the immediate evacuation of the remaining patients, staff and their families,” the organization added.
“The team saw a hospital that was no longer functional: no water, no food, no electricity, no fuel, medical supplies were exhausted,” wrote X (Ex-Twitter) WHO Secretary-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
“Given this unfortunate situation and the condition of many patients, including babies, health workers have requested assistance in evacuating patients who can no longer receive vital care on site,” he said.
In its statement, the WHO reports that the vast majority of patients still in hospital suffer from complex fractures and amputations, burns, chest and abdominal trauma, and that 29 patients suffer from severe spinal injuries and cannot move without medical assistance . Many injured people also suffer from serious infections due to a lack of antibiotics and poor hygiene conditions.
WHO announced that several missions will be organized in the coming days to urgently evacuate remaining patients to Nasser Hospital and the European Hospital in Gaza, although the latter are “already operating beyond their capacity.”
According to the Israeli army, which launched a raid on Al-Chifa Hospital on Wednesday morning, it contains a Hamas hideout, installed in particular in a network of tunnels. The Islamist movement denies this.