Surge of patients with gunshot wounds burdens Gaza hospitals
Brutal Israeli violence on border comes at a time when 40% of basic medicines are no longer in stock
Raed Jadallah belonged to an exclusive club — a small band of surfers who escaped the claustrophobia of blockaded Gaza by riding the waves of the Mediterranean.
Now he’s immobile, a metal fixation device clamped to his left leg after an Israeli bullet fractured his femur in two places.
The 25-year-old plasterer from a seaside refugee camp said he doesn’t know when he’ll be able to walk again, let alone surf.
“Sea and surfing are everything to me,” he said on Wednesday, a day after being discharged from the hospital, his lower body covered by a blanket as he rested on a sofa at his home.
Jadallah is among 1,297 Palestinians shot and wounded by Israeli occupation soldiers, including snipers, during the past two weeks of mass protests on the Gaza border, according to a computerised count by the Gaza Health Ministry.
The recent surge of patients with gunshot wounds has severely taxed Gaza’s clinics and hospitals.
Gaza’s health system has been buckling under years of shortages of essential medicines and equipment caused by the blockade and Hamas’ power struggle with the rival Palestinian National Authority, doctors say.
The violence comes at a time when 40 per cent of basic medicines are no longer in stock in Gaza hospitals, according to the World Health Organisation.
Equipment is also in short supply.
At Gaza’s main hospital, Shifa, half of 200 available fixators had been used up for bones broken by bullets, officials said.