Doctors in Gaza use phone torches as hospitals run out of fuel for generators. [Picture: video report/The Guardian]
In times of war, especially when one party disproportionately targets another, hospitals must be allowed to function unhindered. Yet apartheid Israel has continued to rain down rockets on the people of Gaza, all the while either attacking hospitals directly or hindering their services through a fuel blockade.
“The hospitals can’t cope,” said Dr. Abdul Qadir Hamad, head of the Kidney Transplant Department at Liverpool Royal Hospital in the United Kingdom. He is leading a team that arrived in Gaza to perform sponsored medical procedures.
“If the fuel runs out in a few hours, all things will stop at the hospital. Patients who are on ventilators, patients who are in operating theatres, patients on dialysis will die. Not only that, they have to make very difficult decisions about wounded people because they don’t have the capacity to treat all patients,” he said.
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Fuel running out
Doctors feared the worst as they anticipated most hospitals in the besieged enclave would run out of fuel by Wednesday (25 October). By Thursday, most hospitals resorted to providing only emergency procedures.
This meant many had to be refused medical attention. Fuel stocks are low, and Israel refuses to supply fuel.
Doctors are struggling to keep up. A Red Cross mission to assess the state of Gaza’s hospitals described scenes of chaos and exhaustion, a fuel shortage and non-stop Israeli bombing, reported The Guardian.
William Schomburg, the head of the ICRC mission in Gaza, said medical personnel at the al-Quds and al-Shifa hospitals were stretched.
“There are hospital workers who have been personally impacted by the conflict and lots of them have been on shift around the clock. They have not been able to go home for several days, working really under the toughest and most unimaginable of conditions in scenes of utter chaos, frankly speaking,” he said.
Meanwhile, according to Hamad, hospitals have also become something of a safe haven – if such existed in Gaza – for displaced individuals.
“There [are] thousands of people who are sheltering on the grounds of these hospitals. It’s not only the patients, but also people who are sheltering on the grounds. They received orders to evacuate these hospitals”.
Nearly three weeks since Israeli bombardment, the Palestinian death toll has climbed to 7 028. At least 2 360 of those were children.
