Irish surgeon tells of Gaza hospital hell
and back legs. Dr Shaalan also treated Ahmed Matar Ajazeera, a cameraman, who was badly injured while reporting on the war.
Dr Shaalan said: “He is still in Gaza. All the trials to get him out failed. He is in agony and in severe pain, half of his skull had to be removed, he had surgery on his shoulder and is extremely malnourished. He needs a high protein diet or he will die.”
He said he received messages from organisations in the US and the UK to help take five badly injured children out of the country to treat them.
Dr Shaalan said: “I sent them five names with their files but unfortunately the next day they told me the children had passed away because of their massive burns. This was very shocking for me and the organisations who tried to help to take them out.
“But to take a person out of Gaza, even a month old child, it’s a long story and it needs massive organisation and people need approval to leave and have to pay €5k to exit Gaza. That’s the problem.”
Dr Shaalan said the number of patients waiting for surgery is huge. He and the other volunteer medics slept on mattresses on the floor in the nearby nursing college; shared four toilets with 60 medical staff plus all the families now living in the hospital. Dr Shaalan said: “It was terrible, We were in quite difficult conditions. We lived off a diet of rice and dates and we’d eat two spoonfuls and give the rest to the kids.”
The European Hospital is now serving the whole of Gaza and is severely overcrowded.
He said: “Families are living everywhere in hospital, even on the stairs, there were big sheets everywhere giving them some privacy. I couldn’t work out how they were even able to sleep on the stairs.”
His workday consisted of working from 9am to 6pm with an hour’s rest and back to work until 3am.
He said: “If you don’t work like this you can’t finish operations. Soft tissue reconstruction takes a lot of time.”