Doctors described life under Israeli strikes, no medicine, no hope in Gaza

Anjali Sharma

GG News Bureau
UNITED NATIONS, 29th Feb. According to a team of doctors at Al Amal hospital in Gaza on Wednesday described a life under Israeli air strikes in Gaza stated no communications, no medicine and little hope.

Doctors said taht that’s what operating a hospital in a war zone has become in Gaza, trapped for weeks inside Al Amal Hospital in Khan Younis.

“Life is very difficult here,” hospital manager Dr. Haidar Al-Qudra said.

According to WHP, only 12 out of 36 hospitals are “partially functioning” with the rest destroyed by Israel’s bombardment of the Gaza strip.

Israeli forces continue to raid healthcare facilities, with Al Amal Hospital among the latest to endure a weeks-long deadly siege, OCHA said in its latest update.

Israel claims Hamas is operating in hospitals, but Palestinian authorities and medical professionals have refuted those allegations.

According to a report from the UN Humanitarian Country Team in Palestine Al Amal Hospital took 40 direct hits that killed 25 people and incapacitated the health facility.

UN and its partner agencies said that buildings to be peppered by Israeli sniper fire, communications blackouts and the detention of health workers alongside drastic shortages of essential goods and restrictions on what life saving supplies can enter the complex.

Over 8,000 displaced people have been evacuated from the complex, many have used the premises as shelter from Israeli attacks in the area.

Dr. Al-Qudra said that fighting and multiple bombings found health workers “were afraid for their lives” and for more than a month, they have been unable to leave the hospital buildings.

“We are surrounded now, and patients cannot reach the hospital because they are not allowed to walk in the streets near the hospital,” he said. “Our ambulances now cannot move outside the hospital.”

Many surgical cases had been postponed, he warned.

He noted that five months had passed without many operations being performed, from mastectomies and thyroidectomies.

“All of these normal operations were not performed in any hospital, most of these patients either died or they are suffering more and more,” Dr. Al-Qudra said.

Extensive damage has forced management to try to transfer patients to get the care they need.

He said after the ceiling on the third floor collapsed they would refer 35 patients to other nearby hospitals.

According to UNFPA, the remaining hospitals across Gaza are badly overcrowded. In Rafah, 77 newborns were sharing 20 incubators

Dr. Waheed Qudih, a surgical consultant at Al Amal Hospital was among the medical staff trapped inside during the siege.

“This is the first time we see the sun,” he said, referring to the arrival of a joint UN mission to the battered premises this week. “We have not been allowed to leave the hospital door since 21 January.”

He stayed inside on site “to help injured patients”.

“We perform a lot of surgeries for injured patients, such as general surgery and orthopaedics,” he explained. “We have saved the lives of many patients, and we did what we could with limited facilities.”

The UN deployed a joint mission, the WHO, OCHA, the UNMAS, UNFPA, the safety and security department and UNRWA, the Palestine refugee relief agency.

They met with health workers in the hospital and checked on the condition of the patients and companions inside, the mission’s goal was to evacuate 24 patients and deliver lifesaving food, water and fuel as well as emergency surgical supplies and antibiotics to treat an estimated 50 infections.

The mission had to leave 31 non-critical patients behind, an OCHA spokesperson said on Tuesday.

He highlighted that the Israeli military had not given “any information or any communication” about why the mission ambulances were detained for at least seven hours nor why the paramedics “had been taken out, forced to undress”.

Dr. Athanasios Gargavannis, a trauma surgeon and WHO emergency staff member, said the level of devastation he witnessed is “beyond imaginable”.

“However, there are still patients here,” he said. “Our top priority is to identify and refer a number of them so they can continue to receive care.”

As chronic delays at Israel’s Kerem Shalom crossing continues, with news reports showing Israeli protesters blocking the entry of aid into Gaza, some nations have resorted to emergency aid airdrops this week.

But that represents only a tiny portion of what is needed at Al Amal and other Gaza health centres.

Dr. Al-Qudra said that before the war, it had 100 beds, focused on maternal and child health and was able to meet basic surgical and internal medicine needs while providing specialized rehabilitation services.

The destruction caused by the bombing of the third floor reduced the capacity to an estimated 60 beds. Supplies are scarce. Communications blackouts continue.

On Wednesday, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society said Israeli forces continued to detain seven team members for nearly three weeks, including a doctor, anesthesia technician and ambulance staff, who were taken into custody during Israel’s raid on Al Amal Hospital, according to media reports.

Dr. Al-Qudra stressed there is “no respect for any rule or any humanitarian law related to the medical staff”.