“There is virtually no health system left in Gaza,” Médecins Sans Frontières denounced on Friday, after most services at Nasser Hospital, where the NGO still worked, are “now out of order” due to the conflict between Israel and Hamas.
• Also read: Hamas looking for a key political role in the post-war period
• Also read: Hamas releases video of three Israeli hostages in Gaza
• Also read: The WHO rejects Israel's allegations of collusion with Hamas
“The surgical capacity of Nasser Hospital,” the largest health facility” in Khan Younes in southern Gaza, is now “virtually non-existent,” and the “few members of the medical staff who remain at the hospital must.” We have to deal with very low stocks of medical equipment,” complains Doctors Without Borders in a press release.
The Hamas Ministry of Health reported a “complete power outage” at that hospital center, which caused “all medical equipment, including ventilators, to stop working.”
While most of the hospital's staff and thousands of people who had sought refuge there have fled in recent days, there are still between 300 and 500 seriously injured patients in the structure who are not being evacuated “because of the danger and the lack of ambulances.” could, said Doctors Without Borders.
“With the Nasser Hospital and the European Hospital deactivated, there is virtually no health system in Gaza,” said Guillemette Thomas, medical coordinator for Doctors Without Borders, in this press release. For whom “the entire health system is now out of order” in the enclave.
According to Doctors Without Borders, only eight of the 36 hospitals that opened before the war still operate “partially” in Gaza. In the south, where the Israeli offensive is currently taking place, especially in Khan Younes, “they are all saturated or inaccessible,” specifies the NGO.
A Hamas attack in southern Israel on October 7 killed more than 1,140 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli figures. About 250 people were subsequently kidnapped and taken to Gaza, about a hundred of whom were released in late November as part of a ceasefire in exchange for Palestinian prisoners.
In response, Israel vowed to “destroy” Hamas, designated a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union and especially Israel, and launched a massive military operation that, according to the Islamist movement's Health Ministry, brought in 26,083 people, the vast majority of the deaths are women, children and adolescents.