2023-10-15 02:43:00
Ahmed Alawi Sunday, October 15, 2023 05:43 AM
The World Health Organization called on Israel to cancel evacuation orders targeting 22 hospitals in the northern Gaza Strip, where thousands of patients are being treated in its internal departments, because the forced evacuation of patients and health workers will further exacerbate the humanitarian and public health catastrophe in Gaza.
The organization warned that forcing patients and health workers to leave these hospitals would increase the humanitarian catastrophe and harm public health in the region.
The organization explained in its statement that this measure might be disastrous and dangerous for patients suffering from serious diseases, as these orders force them to move to the southern Gaza Strip, where health facilities face enormous pressure and are unable to accommodate this increasing number of patients. This measure practically means… Death sentence for patients.
The statement indicated that hospital managers and workers find themselves facing difficult choices: either abandoning critically ill patients amid the bombing campaign, or risking themselves by remaining in their facilities to treat patients, or endangering the lives of their patients while trying to transfer them to facilities that do not have the capacity to receive them. Overwhelmingly, caregivers chose to stay behind the northern Gazans moving south, adhering to the oath they had sworn upon joining the health professions to “do no harm,” rather than risk transporting their critically ill patients during evacuations. But health workers should not be forced into a situation where they are left with such impossible choices.
In addition, tens of thousands of displaced people in northern Gaza resort to open spaces in or around hospitals because they see them as a safe haven from violence, while at the same time wanting to protect the facilities from potential attacks. Thus, their lives are also at risk if they are exposed to violence. Bombed health facilities.
The statement stressed that there are reliable reports of the killing of health care workers and the destruction of health facilities, which deprives civilians of a basic human right, which is the right to health care necessary to save lives, which is prohibited by international humanitarian law.
At the end of the statement, the World Health Organization called on Israel to immediately retract its orders to hospitals in northern Gaza to evacuate their headquarters, and calls for the protection of health facilities, health workers, patients and civilians. The organization also reiterates its calls for the immediate and safe delivery of medical supplies, fuel, clean water, food and other humanitarian aid to Gaza through the Rafah crossing, where vital life-saving aid is located.
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