American doctors describe dire conditions at a Khan Younis hospital in Gaza
A pair of American volunteer doctors described a hospital in NBC News to do just to do Gaza, with bodies spread over blood floors while medical staff had trouble treating hundreds of people injured when they were trying to access humanitarian aid.
“We have children who died on the ground, and we are unable to move these patients just due to the volume we have received,” Ahmed Farhat, California emergency doctor on Tuesday, in a video message, speaking of the Nasser medical complex in the city of Khan Younis.
“We have intubated patients on the ground without sedation. We have patients who have thoracic tubes on the ground, patients who bleed,” added Farhat, who is a little less than two weeks in a medical mission led by Rahma Worldwide, based in Michigan, a charitable body founded in 2014 which exploits emergency and humanitarian rescue programs through the emergency and humanitarian intervention programs through the Middle East and Africa.
His comments echo those of other doctors working in Gaza who, in recent interviews, deplored the lack of food and medicine authorized in the enclave, in the midst of international indignation in the face of famine and generalized malnutrition deaths. Others have described aid distribution points such as death traps, as an increasing number of people were killed or injured when looking for food desperately necessary.
On Tuesday, three short videos taken by Farhat in the Nasser medical complex showed that dozens of people were waiting for a treatment on hospital soils. Some had inserted tubes to help them breathe, others were motionless.
Citing data from the hospital administration on Wednesday, Farhat said in an SMS that the Nasser complex had received 453 patients in several hours on Tuesday and that 48 of them died.
He added that his patients had told him that they had been criticized by Israeli forces when he was trying to collect the aid of two sites managed by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, the organization supported by the United States and Israel which has been controversial since its replacement of most of the rescue operations managed by the United Nations in May.
In a statement to NBC News on Wednesday, the GHF, which operates four militarized food aid distribution sites through the enclave in areas where the Israeli army is active, have declared convoys of aid belonging to the United Nations and other organizations in the past, have often adopted near their locations and were regularly caught by large crowds.
However, he said that there was “no or near incident” of their sites on Tuesday. A spokesperson for the United Nations Office for Humanitarian Affairs Coordination (OCHA) could not confirm whether his convoys had been looted near the GHF sites.
The Israeli army did not immediately respond to a request for comments on the victims of Nasser Hospital.
Farhat said that other patients had told him that they had been dismissed at another incident near the southernmost city of Gaza Rafah while looking for help from a United Nations aid convoy.
An OCHA spokesperson had no details on the specific event, but that these incidents are not uncommon.
In addition, the Ministry of Health in Gaza managed by Hamas said on Wednesday that 87 people had been killed and 570 injured in a series of incidents across the enclave on Tuesday. A ministry spokesperson also said that Gaza hospitals had received the body of 49 people on Wednesday and that many people killed awaited aid near the support points supported by the United States.
Travis Melin, Oregon anesthesiologist who also volunteers at Nasser hospital, said the number of patients on Tuesday had been “huge”. On Wednesday, in an SMS, he added that he had seen the greatest number of victims in the hospital during his one -month term.
“We are still doing an emergency surgery on people who should have gone to LA or yesterday,” he said.
The “worst scenario of famine” takes place in the Gaza Strip under the assault of Israel, said the world’s first world on Hunger last week. Meanwhile, most of its residents were driven out of their home and more than 61,000 people, including thousands of children, according to local health officials. Israel launched its offensive in Gaza after the terrorist attacks led by Hamas, in which some 1,200 people were killed and around 250 hostages.
Nearly 1,400 people were killed and more than 4,000 injured during food, the United Nations OCHA said on an update on Tuesday. “At least 859 people have been killed around GHF sites since the start of GHF operations,” he added.
