[News] Health situation "catastrophic" as Gaza genocide enters sixth month

[Anti-Imperialist News]

electronicintifada.net
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/nora-barrows-friedman/health-situation-catastrophic-gaza-genocide-enters-sixth-month>
Health situation "catastrophic" as Gaza genocide enters sixth month

Nora Barrows-Friedman
<https://electronicintifada.net/people/nora-barrows-friedman> Rights and
Accountability
<https://electronicintifada.net/blog/rights-and-accountability> 9 March 2024
------------------------------
[image: A child with wounds on his face is being treated by adults in
hospital scrubs]

A wounded child is treated by physicians at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in
Deir El-Balah following Israeli attacks, 7 March.
APA images

Doctors, nurses and medical staff in Gaza are being forced to treat
patients in increasingly dire situations as Israel continues to block food,
water, medicine and basic supplies with the backing and complicity of the
United States.

Over the last five months, Israeli forces have destroyed 155 health
institutions and rendered 32 out of the 36 hospitals completely or
partially out of service, according to Dr. Ashraf al-Qedra, the Palestinian
health ministry’s spokesperson in Gaza.

“The health situation is absolutely catastrophic and cannot be described,
and it is getting worse and deteriorating more as a result of the lack of
the necessary medical aid,” al-Qedra stated.

The World Health Organization said
<https://www.emro.who.int/images/stories/Sitrep_-_issue_24.pdf> that the
average bed occupancy rate at Gaza hospitals is almost 300 percent.

For nearly 50 days, Israel has laid siege
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/patients-die-israeli-troops-storm-gaza-hospital>
to Al-Amal Hospital in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis.

Israeli forces have attacked the hospital at least 40 separate times since
mid-January, killing at least 25 Palestinians and leaving the facility
“incapacitated,” according
<https://www.ochaopt.org/content/new-incident-medical-evacuation-al-amal-hospital-marks-unacceptable-security-conditions-humanitarian-aid>
to the United Nations.

Thousands of patients, displaced families and medical staff were trapped
inside the building for weeks as Israeli tanks and snipers surrounded the
hospital complex.
“Buildings continue 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 lifesaving supplies can enter
the complex,” the UN stated <https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/02/1147037>
in late February.

Al-Amal’s manager Dr. Haidar Al-Qudra told the UN that for months, critical
surgical cases were forcibly postponed.

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

Israeli forces have arrested more than a dozen Palestinian Red Crescent
Society health workers, including physicians and ambulance staff, from the
hospital. Their whereabouts remain unknown.

The World Health Organization reports
<https://www.emro.who.int/images/stories/Sitrep_-_issue_24.pdf> that
overall 118 health workers in Gaza have been abducted and detained since 7
October.
Al-Qudra explained <https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/02/1147037> to the
United Nations that there is “no respect for any rule or any humanitarian
law related to the medical staff.”

This week, civil defense workers and PRCS staff reported that they have
been trying to control fires that have broken out inside hospital
buildings.
PRCS warned on 3 March that medical supplies, medications and laboratory
equipment “are depleted,” while drinking water, food and other essential
items for infants and elderly patients are almost gone. Blocking medical
convoys

Israeli forces have repeatedly attacked and blocked medical convoys to and
from Al-Amal Hospital.

In late February, PRCS and World Health Organization teams evacuated two
dozen patients from the facility, including a pregnant woman and a mother
and her newborn.

“Despite prior coordination for all staff members and vehicles with the
Israeli side, the Israeli forces blocked the WHO-led convoy for many hours
the moment it left the hospital,” the United Nations stated
<https://www.ochaopt.org/content/new-incident-medical-evacuation-al-amal-hospital-marks-unacceptable-security-conditions-humanitarian-aid>
.

“The Israeli military forced patients and staff out of ambulances and
stripped all paramedics of their clothes. Three PRCS paramedics were
subsequently detained, although their personal details had been shared with
the Israeli forces in advance, while the rest of the convoy stayed in place
for over seven hours,” the UN added.
Last month, Chicago-based emergency room doctor Thaer Ahmad joined The
Electronic Intifada livestream to talk about his recent experience working
at Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis.

Since his return from Gaza, Nasser Medical Complex has been completely
debilitated
<https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/maureen-clare-murphy/israel-lays-siege-gaza-hospital-rafah-stares-death-face>
by Israel’s brutal siege and attacks on the facility, its patients, staff
and people sheltering there.

“It was a very, very overwhelming situation prior to any sort of siege,”
Ahmad said.

“There were people that we were treating on the floor, we were dealing with
trauma activation where there are multiple people coming [in] at the same
time because a house had been bombed a couple of blocks away,” he explained.

“The doctors there were overworked. They’re working 24-hour shifts on, 24
hours off, and then they too were probably sheltering somewhere around the
hospital – and some of them were staying in a tent right outside with their
family.”
Impact of starvation on infants

On the 7 March episode of The Electronic Intifada livestream, Dr. Arham
Ali, a pediatric critical care specialist, described what it is like to
treat the most vulnerable patients inside a hospital in Gaza.

Ali, who works at Loma Linda University Children’s Hospital in southern
California, recently returned from a two-week stay in Gaza where he worked
alongside doctors and nurses at the Emirati Maternity Hospital in Rafah.

“Despite my years of training, my vocabulary does not encompass enough
words to describe the atrocities and the devastation that is happening in
Gaza right now, for these young, innocent children, specifically the
newborn population,” Ali told us.

With few supplies, and lacking basic medication, Dr. Ali said that
physicians simply cannot provide life-saving care for the many infants who
are born premature.

He also discussed the long-term physical and cognitive impacts on children
due to Israel’s engineered policy of starvation.

The neonatal intensive care unit at the Emirati hospital only has 12 beds,
he explained, but physicians have been forced to crowd as many as 40
infants inside those beds.

“These patients are sharing incubators, they’re in shared spaces, which as
you can imagine is devastating for infection control and for sepsis,” he
said.

Many of the tiny patients Ali treated were born early due to maternal
malnutrition, dehydration, stress and trauma.

“Many of them could have been treated and would have [had] beautiful lives
– we’d see them into adulthood with some assistance,” he said.

“But unfortunately given the severe, severe lack of healthcare
infrastructure, due to the severe lack of essential medical supplies and
equipment, these children who have survivable injuries – now are unable to
survive.”
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/news_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20240309/288b93fe/attachment.htm>