2023-12-21 20:14:00
The World Health Organization (WHO) stated this Thursday that there are no longer any functioning hospitals in northern Gaza, and detailed the “unbearable” scenes that teams observed during a recent mission.
“There are actually no hospitals left in operation in the north,” said Richard Peeperkorn, WHO representative in the occupied Palestinian territories, at a press conference.
According to Peeperkorn, the last functioning hospital in northern Gaza was Al-Ahli Hospital, but shortages of fuel, electricity, medical supplies and staff have made it “minimally functional.”
“Now Al-Ahli is a shell of a hospital… It stopped functioning completely and currently only functions as a hospice, with very little or no care.”
Only nine of Gaza’s 36 hospitals are now functioning, Peeperkorn said, adding that all nine are in southern Gaza.
The WHO representative spoke to journalists following the organization’s missions carried out in recent days in the Al-Ahli and Al-Shifa hospitals, located in Gaza City.
Sean Casey, who led missions to the two hospitals, recounted the “unbearable” scenes WHO workers witnessed in a church in the Al-Ahli complex that had been converted into a makeshift ward.
“A church with regarding 30 patients, almost none of them outpatients. So bedridden patients, some of them with severe traumatic injuries… We saw a lot of patients who said they hadn’t bathed or changed their clothes in weeks,” Casey said. .
“Patients were screaming in pain, but they were also screaming for us to give them water. It’s quite unbearable to see someone with casts on several limbs, external fixators on several limbs, just asking for drinking water.”
Casey said describing Al-Ahli as a hospice implied a “level of care” that the five doctors and five nurses working there are “simply incapable of providing,” given virtually non-existent resources.
He stated that Al-Ahli is now more of a “place where people await death” unless they can be moved to a “safer place” capable of providing care.
The medical staff remaining in Al-Ahli are doctors in training who cannot perform surgical interventions, Casey said, detailing that the WHO is working to try to transfer these patients to a center in southern Gaza.
He also provided an update on Al-Shifa Hospital, describing its emergency department as a “bloodbath.”
“It has very few staff, almost the same number as Al-Ahli Hospital, which cares for hundreds of patients. And thousands of internally displaced people take refuge on the hospital grounds.”
Casey highlighted the need to get more fuel supplies to Al-Shifa, stating that they need 10,000 liters of fuel per day, a figure he called a “huge increase in fuel.”
“We need urgent action. We have to stop these children, women and elderly people from dying in a place where they should be safe and where they should be cared for,” Casey stressed in his closing remarks.
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