Hospitals in the Gaza Strip are on the verge of collapse. While hundreds of wounded enter Gaza’s health centers every day, the complete land, sea and air blockade imposed by Israel following the Hamas attack on October 7 has left this enclave without electricity, water, food or medication.
“Fuel reserves in all hospitals in Gaza are expected to last for around 24 hours,” the UN Office for Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said on Monday. And without fuel, “the lives of thousands of patients” are at risk, particularly those in intensive care units, newborns in incubators and patients requiring dialysis. The general director of the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital, Sobhi Skik, estimates that they will have electricity for 48 hours. It is the only one with oncology services.
“Everything that is being done now is to save lives,” without the possibility of carrying out other types of measures, emphasizes Mohamed Abu Mughaisib, deputy medical coordinator of a Médecins Sans Frontières team in the Gaza Strip, in an audio released by the NGO . The 3,500 beds that the United Nations estimates all health centers in the Gaza Strip have are not enough to care for all patients. In just ten days, Israeli Defense Forces rocket attacks injured nearly 10,000 people, killing more than 2,800. According to doctors working in Gaza quoted by the Portal agency, only the most urgent cases are operated on due to a lack of resources.
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Gaza Health Ministry spokesman Ashraf Al Qidra has asked Gazans to go to Al Shifa Hospital, the largest in the Gaza Strip, to donate blood. “If the hospital stops working, the whole world will be responsible for the hundreds or thousands of patients who rely on our service,” he said this Monday. The capital’s medical center, where tens of thousands of civilians seek refuge, has just buried 100 bodies because they did not fit in the morgue. The painkillers have also been used up and there are hardly any medications left even in the pharmacies, report employees in the Doctors Without Borders department.
Al Shifa is in the northern half, which the Israeli army has ordered its 1.1 million residents to evacuate in the face of a ground attack, and is home to 22 medical centers. Another is Kamal Adwan Hospital. The staff did not abandon their posts because leaving “would mean death” for the seven newborns in need of ventilators and for “other patients under care,” the head of pediatrics, Hussam Abu Safiya, told the Associated Agency Press.
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Palestinian medics cried outside Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza on Monday.DAWOOD NEMER (AFP)
🔴#Ribbon
“They fired at us all day. We don’t know what will happen tomorrow or where we will go.”
There is no electricity, no drinking water and medicines are in short supply.
Dr. Mohammed Abu Mughaiseeb, Deputy Medical Coordinator of #MSF In #Ribbon. pic.twitter.com/4Vj20kgGHs— MSF Prensa (@MSF_Prensa) October 15, 2023
More than half of the north’s residents, about 600,000, had fled south by Monday out of fear of Israeli invasion, according to the UN. Among them, there are only a few health workers who “largely chose to stay behind.” [en los hospitales] and honor their oath as health professionals to “do no harm” rather than risk transferring their critically ill patients during evacuation,” said OCHA, which considers this safe transfer impossible.
“The situation is very difficult; “Today we spent two hours looking for drinking water,” complains Dr. Abu Mughaisib. Although food is still available, hospitals are “barely functioning” and medicines are “running out”.
Death sentence
The World Health Organization has highlighted the pressure the situation is putting on the few hospitals in the south. Not only are they “already at full capacity” treating those wounded in the bombings and suffering from the same shortages of medical supplies, water, electricity and fuel, but they are now also having to accept patients from medical centers in the north, which the Fall is “continuing to be absorbed.” Suffering injuries and having difficulty working beyond their maximum capacity.” Going from one place to another “can be a death sentence for sick people,” he noted.
This is the case at Nasser Hospital in the southern Gaza town of Khan Yunis, where the intensive care unit is full of the injured, especially children under three years old. Hundreds of people have become seriously ill from the rockets’ impact, 35 are in intensive care and 60 need dialysis, but according to the head of the emergency room, the hospital only has fuel to function until the end of the day, Mohamed Qandil. “And when it ends, the entire health system collapses.” […] “All of these patients are at risk of dying if the power goes out,” he told the AP.
Health workers treated a Palestinian child injured after an Israeli attack at Khan Younis Hospital on Monday. MAHMUD HAMS (AFP)
Meanwhile, the flow of those wounded or seeking refuge from Israeli bombings into medical centers continues, the Palestinian Red Crescent (PRCS) confirms. “Hospitals have a very limited number of days of capacity to operate and care for the wounded,” they said in a statement denouncing the Al-Quds Centers in Gaza City and Al-Amal in Khan Younis (south of…) in the Gaza Strip), “they are also running out of fuel, medicine and medical supplies; as well as without food and water for staff, volunteers and patients.” “In the last hour we have admitted 60 injured civilians; “That’s one patient per minute,” Qandil described to Al Jazeera television.
The PRCS on Sunday condemned the intensification of bombings near Al-Quds Hospital, “with about five attacks in less than a minute,” and that Israeli forces had bombed ambulances trying to pick up the wounded in Gaza. At least four people from this organization, two health workers and two volunteers, have lost their lives since the conflict began.
Several wounded people were taken to Al-Shifa Hospital after an Israeli bomb attack. Abed Khaled (AP)
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