Gaza kids dying of horrific burns
AN Irish-based surgeon who has returned from a volunteering mission in Gaza said children are dying from burns while patients can only get paracetamol for post-op pain relief.
Dr Mohamed Shaalan, an orthopaedic surgeon in Dublin, added he saw “the worst injuries” of his life during his three-week stint in the besieged strip.
He said: “I knew some healthcare professionals over there who told me that they didn’t even have one single screw left to fix fractures so I took my own supplies, hoping to leave some behind but there was such a demand that we used them all before we were finished over there.
“The number of injuries were massive. Broken bones had been treated with an external fixator which is a metal frame that holds bones in place.
“It has pins that go through the skin and into the bone and is only meant to be a temporary measure but many people had been left months like that. The fractures had not healed and the pins had become loose and they were in persistent pain.
“There are so many patients there that you only get one chance to get into surgery.
“There are no analgesics so paracetamol is what patients are given while undergoing surgery. Sometimes I was able to get a local anaesthetic to numb and give pain relief for a fracture but it was rare. There were no drugs and little antibiotics.
“There were a huge number of children of all ages and many of them died because of massive skin loss.
“In adults, we could sometimes remove skin from somewhere else for a graft but the kids were too fragile and would easily die if they didn’t get immediate treatment and skin coverage which wasn’t available.
“There were five kids who had third degree burns to 40% of their body. Sadly, they all died the next day. The hospital was packed, maybe 10 patients to a small room and some sleeping on the floor.
“Their families all stayed wherever they could find a spot in the hospital. Some families were living behind bed sheets in the corridor and I saw a family living on the stairs in the hospital.
“It was shocking and heartbreaking to see so many injuries and so many children dying. I worked day and night, we all did. I performed about 80 surgeries but they were all very complex and I had to improvise on some of the surgeries because of the situation I was in and the lack of supplies.
“Healthcare workers in Gaza are exhausted, working without days off, and many say they haven’t received a salary in over six months. Some can’t afford now the transport to get to work,
“I wasn’t scared because we were all just focusing on our work but the night we arrived, we were shown to our rooms, where we slept on mattresses on the floor and bombing started around midnight for four hours.
“They were bombing around Nasser Hospital which was a distance away but the intensity of the bombing was so fierce that our building shook and window panes shattered.”
Dr Shaalan said food was so scarce, they gave their own rations to malnourished children.
He added: “Even if you have money, everything is scarce and expensive. We were maybe given rice or some bread and cheese.
“We would usually take two spoonfuls of rice to keep us going and give the rest to the children.
“Some schools were bombed and others are home to evacuees.
“Students at third level lost all their documents when two main universities were destroyed so their present is frozen and their future seems to be lost.”
Many kids of all ages died of massive skin loss
DR MOHAMED SHAALAN SURGEON