2024-01-19 17:32:00
Cairo, January 19 (EFE) -. The humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders (MSF) assured this Friday that medical aid “arrives slowly” in southern Gaza, although they use “the smallest amount necessary” of medicines and equipment in case the situation worsens or access to the area is cut off. .
The MSF medical officer in Gaza, Enrico Vallaperta, who left the Strip this Thursday, said in a press conference in Cairo that in the hospitals in the south “the main problem is not access to medicines”, but “the space for the wounded.”
“On many occasions, following operating on a patient, there is no place in the hospital where they can stay,” explained the doctor, who assured that this situation “represents the greatest challenge today” and that they have “just enough to operate.” .
Most of Gaza’s population has moved due to fighting and bombing to the south of the region, where it is estimated that there are more than a million internally displaced people, a place that is “absolutely overwhelmed,” according to Vallaperta.
“You cannot imagine hundreds of thousands of people without homes, sleeping under plastic sheets, when it rains or during the night, when the temperature drops to eight degrees,” he explained.
Currently, only nine of Gaza’s 36 hospitals are partially functioning, all of them in the southern half of the Strip, while in the north four centers provide extremely limited services to patients, unable to admit new ones.
The NGO has tried to “coordinate with Israel” to access the north of the Strip, but its demands “have not received a response or have been rejected,” explained MSF emergency coordinator in Cairo, Helen Ottens-Patterson.
For this reason, the humanitarian organization concentrates much of its work in Rafah, near the southern border with Egypt and the only crossing open for people and aid, and where the Emirati hospital is located, where MSF provides “assistance in the childbirth”, as well as in the Indonesian field hospital and the Al Shaboura clinic.
On the other hand, the lack of running water and the large concentration of people “are causing an increase in the spread of infectious and respiratory diseases,” according to Ottens-Patterson, who also warned of “an increase in heart attacks” due to the lack of medications for chronic diseases or dialysis equipment.
Despite this, MSF, which has been working for two decades in Palestinian territory, assured that the supplies allowed so far “are insignificant” compared to the “volume of aid needed” for a place that, even before the war, ” was crucially dependent on foreign aid.
This week, the United Nations once once more warned of the humanitarian collapse of Gaza as the Israeli offensive continues, which during the last day caused at least 172 deaths and some 326 injuries, while the total number of confirmed deaths in Gaza since October 7 They are approaching 25,000. EFE
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