Gaza doctors forced into desperate measures as medical shortages persist
Doctors in Gaza have been forced to take desperate measures, including reusing equipment from bodies, as supply shortages continue.
After returning from a visit to the enclave, doctors and aid officials yesterday painted a dire picture of the healthcare situation.
The doctors said they had to extract bone fixators – metal stabilising frames that hold fractured bones together – from deceased patients and use them to treat the living.
“Doctors have now started to reuse some medical equipment meant for single use,” said Melanie Ward, chief executive of the British charity Medical Aid for Palestinians.
“Doctors are now having to remove [external fixators] from patients who have died and reuse them on living patients. That’s how serious the situation is.”
Vascular surgeon Dr Mahim Qureshi said that while working at the emergency ward of Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Hospital, she had to use a nappy to dress the wound of a man who had been injured by Israeli shelling.
“That was the cleanest thing I could find in those minutes to place on his limbs,” she said. The man’s leg later had to be amputated, she added.
The complete lack of clean running water means that surgeons are unable to wash their hands between operations, Dr Qureshi said.
The widespread damage to Gaza’s infrastructure also means that millions of people are exposed to raw sewage, particularly those seeking refuge in overcrowded areas of Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city.
“This has direct implications on children having to live in unhygienic and unsanitary conditions, with Israel not having switched on the water supply,” said Ms Ward.
Throat surgeon Dr Khaled Dawas said that “every single wound we have seen is infected”.
Last week, the International Rescue Committee said that even if a ceasefire were to come into effect in Gaza immediately, almost 12,000 people would die as a result of disease over the next six months, while 90,000 would be killed as a result of “secondary impacts” if the conflict escalates further.
Massive displacement is compounding the problem of Gazans being unable to gain access to medicine and what little remains of the enclave’s healthcare system. Up to 70 per cent of Gaza’s population does not have access to adequate shelter, with about 60 per cent of homes having been damaged or destroyed since the war broke out in October last year.
Many are afraid to return to their neighbourhoods, given the high level of unpredictable violence in Gaza.
Earlier this month, the UN said that up to 1.9 million displaced Palestinians were staying in or near the world body’s 154 shelters in the enclave.
“Due to the continued escalation of fighting and evacuation orders, some households have moved away from the shelters where they were initially registered,” the UN said.
IRC vice president of emergencies Bob Kitchen, who has spent 25 years working in the humanitarian sector in war zones around the world, said conditions in Gaza were among the worst he had experienced.
“I have never seen another example where two million
The complete lack of clean running water means surgeons are unable to wash their hands, one doctor said
people are cornered, slaughtered and starved and the world is essentially inert,” he said.
Gaza’s few functioning hospitals have faced siege-like conditions, with the UN saying that Israeli troops have hampered efforts to deliver medical supplies and fuel, prevented emergency teams from accessing medical centres and stopped critically ill patients from being moved.
Israel has repeatedly accused Hamas and other militant groups of using hospitals as command centres – an allegation denied by Hamas and medical officials.
Aid agencies have warned that Israel’s planned incursion into Rafah would be disastrous for the more than one million civilians who have sought refuge in the city.
There would be “no way possible” for Israel to carry out such an operation without “human slaughter”, Ms Ward said.
“There is no space to move. It would be impossible for them to attack and for it to not be a disaster of epic proportions.”