“Since the beginning of the war I have been working 24 hours a day, every day. It’s really difficult. I had not seen such serious wounds in previous wars. Today there are serious cases and all injuries include burns. Imagine getting 100 or 200 patients a day, sometimes even 500. And every day it gets harder because many other hospitals have been evacuated. All patients come to us. And most of the patients we see are women and children.” This is the statement of Dr. Hafer Abukhussa, a plastic and reconstructive surgeon with Doctors Without Borders (MSF) at Nasser Hospital in the southern Gaza Strip. “What hurt me the most was seeing a child, an innocent child, an injured child who needed serious surgery because he had lost a limb. This child had also lost his entire family. When it woke up from the anesthesia, he wanted to see it.” “It’s a really heartbreaking situation,” says the doctor. “The difficulties we face are the lack of medical supplies. Before the war, this hospital had about 300 patients, today there are more than 1,000. Many patients are homeless because they were forced to flee or because their homes were destroyed. They do not have access to drinking water. There is no food, there is no electricity and some people have left their homes with only the clothes they were wearing. We know we are in danger at any moment, but we will continue to work,” he stressed.
