2023-12-22 18:39:22
“We only have gauze and antiseptic,” he said while holding a bottle of iodine that he used to cleanse the scar of a long wound extending from the chest to the abdomen of one of the injured men. “More than that, we have nothing.”
He added: “Of course, the patient is supposed to stay overnight inside the hospital, but due to the overcrowding, he was transferred to the field hospital.”
Al-Hourani said: “There are dozens of people like this patient. We have children. Children are difficult to deal with. We are surprised when we change him the next day to find a severe infection because there is no sterilization, there are no prepared places, there are no designated places, and there are no waste baskets.”
Sayyida Khadija School is located in Deir al-Balah in the middle of the small, crowded Palestinian enclave that has been besieged and bombed by Israeli forces, and in which it has carried out ground operations for weeks in response to a bloody attack launched by Hamas fighters on southern Israel on October 7.
The war killed more than 20,000 people, according to local health authorities in Gaza, run by Hamas, and injured 50,000 others. Meanwhile, hospitals stopped working and almost all medical supplies were exhausted.
Aid agencies say that although some aid has entered Gaza from Egypt in recent weeks, much of it has been difficult to distribute outside the immediate border area, and hospitals elsewhere in the Strip are barely able to function.
Doctors Without Borders said in a post on social media on Friday that doctors at Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis in southern Gaza: “They are stepping on the bodies of dead children to treat other children who will die anyway.”
In the field hospital in Deir al-Balah, Al-Hourani was busy bandaging the head of Maysara Abu Taylakh, a boy who was injured in the bombing but was discharged early from the nearby Al-Aqsa Hospital to make room for dealing with more serious cases.
His father, Jihad Abu Talekh, said: “They were forced to go to the field hospital they are currently in, which is a school, on the basis of completing treatment… despite the fact that the situation here is difficult in terms of medical equipment and a shortage of medicines, nurses, and doctors.”
The family lost their home and is now temporarily residing in the field hospital, while looking for another place to seek refuge.
The father added: “Now we cannot find a place. I mean, following the bombing of the place where we were displaced, there is no place for us. We will have to leave here temporarily until we find another place or shelter to sit in.”
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