Gaza’s hospitals at dangerous tipping point
Just weeks ago, the Gaza Strip’s feeble health system was struggling with a runaway surge of Covid-19 cases. Authorities cleared out hospital operating rooms, suspended non-essential care and redeployed doctors to patients having difficulty breathing. Then, the bombs began to fall. This week’s violence between Israel and Gaza’s Hamas rulers has killed 119 Palestinians, including 31 children, and wounded 830 people in the impoverished territory.
Israeli airstrikes have pounded apartments, blown up cars and toppled buildings.
Doctors across the crowded coastal enclave are now reallocating intensive care unit beds and scrambling to keep up with a very different health crisis: treating blast and shrapnel wounds, bandaging cuts and performing amputations.
Distraught relatives didn’t wait for ambulances, rushing the wounded by car or on foot to Shifa Hospital, the territory’s largest.
Exhausted doctors hurried from patient to patient, frantically bandaging shrapnel wounds to stop the bleeding.
Others gathered at the hospital morgue, waiting with stretchers to remove the bodies for burial.
At the Indonesia Hospital in the northern town of Jabaliya, the clinic overflowed after bombs fell nearby.
Blood was everywhere, with victims lying on the floors of hallways.
Relatives crowded the ER, crying out for loved ones and cursing Israel.
“Before the military attacks, we had major shortages and could barely manage with the second (virus) wave,” said Gaza Health Ministry official Abdelatif al-Hajj by phone as bombs thundered in the background.
“Now casualties are coming from all directions, really critical casualties. I fear a total collapse.”
Gutted by years of conflict, the impoverished healthcare system in the territory of more than two million people has always been vulnerable.
Division between Hamas and the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority and a nearly 14-year blockade imposed by Israel with Egypt’s help also has strangled the infrastructure.
If the conflict intensifies, the hospital won’t be able to care for the virus patients, hospital director Yousef al-Akkad said.
“We have only 15 intensive care beds, and all I can do is pray,” he said, adding that because the hospital lacks surgical supplies and expertise, he’s already arranged to send one child to Egypt for reconstructive shoulder surgery.
Hospital director Mohammed Abu Selmia lamented the latest series of blows to Gaza’s health system.
“The Gaza Strip is under siege for 14 years, and the health sector is exhausted.
“Then comes the pandemic,” he said, adding that most of the equipment is as old as the blockade and can’t be sent out for repairs.
Now, his teams already strained by virus cases are treating bombing victims, more than half of whom are critical cases needing surgery.
“They work relentlessly,” he added. — AP