Britain opens first field hospital in Gaza to meet ‘staggering’ need

THE first UK-funded field hospital in the Gaza Strip is being set up and will soon be able to provide services from basic healthcare to surgical procedures.

The tented hospital was dispatched from Manchester, and arrived a few days ago. Once fully built, it will be able to handle at least 250 patients a day, according to UK-Med, a medical NGO.

Many doctors and nurses from the UK will help at the hospital, which will replace a temporary facility handling about 100 patients a day.

That was built with local timber from destroyed buildings. “The scale of the need is staggering,” UK-Med’s David Wightwick told the BBC.

“There are very few services of any kind and the health services have been eroded to the extent that if you are sick, if you are ill, if you are wounded, you are in a very difficult situation.”

UK-Med has already been operating five mobile health clinics on routes going north of Rafah, dubbed “GPs on wheels,” offering primary care.

These mobile clinics have seen more than 1,200 patients. UK-Med has also dispatched a surgical team to help at Al-Aqsa Hospital, the only functioning hospital in Gaza. Together, more than 530 surgical procedures have been performed, with about a quarter of them on injured children.

Mr Wightwick said that there are also cases of acute malnutrition in very young children.

Humanitarian organisations have been warning of the catastrophic conditions in the Gaza Strip, particularly in Rafah, the most southern point, where about 1.5 million Palestinians have been displaced.

Rafah is the last remaining refuge as Israel-Hamas battles have pushed Palestinians to the border with Egypt.