‘No power is killing babies’

INCUBATORS ON SOLAR – UNTIL CLOUDS COME ‘Patients dying on operation table because lifesaving machinery off.’

Gaza’s hospitals have been wracked by strikes, sieges and raids but on a day-today basis, it is the Palestinian territory’s acute power shortages that pose an enduring risk to life-saving care.

“Power means life or death in hospitals,” said Hiba Tibi, country director for the occupied West Bank and Gaza at the international aid group Care. At Kamal Adwan hospital’s maternity ward in northern Gaza, solar panels keep incubators running, five months into the war. “This section works on solar, so it may stop working at any time as a result of clouds or any change in the weather,” said Dr Ahmad al-Kahlut.

The hospital is one of only 12 partly functioning hospitals, out of 36 in the war-battered Gaza Strip. “We hear of newborns dying because there is no electricity for the incubators,” said Tibi, as well as children dying when ventilators switch off. Patients are “dying on the operation table simply because lifesaving machinery is switched off,” she said.

According to Kahlut, there are no more functional neonatal care wards in the rest of the territory, piling pressure onto his hospital.

Power generation is a critical issue plaguing Gaza, United Nations agencies have said. Electricity shortages in the north of the Gaza Strip” were still among the top challenges listed by the UN humanitarian agency Ocha.

Israel announced a “complete siege” of Gaza at the start of the war, cutting off fuel and power supplies, as well as food, water and other vital goods.

The enclave has mainly relied on power generators as a result, which require fuel to function, a scarce commodity these days.

At the beginning of the war, WHO established that Gaza’s 12 main hospitals require 94 000l of fuel to keep functioning. –