As an American physician, I felt referred to as to assist Palestinians who’ve confronted a collapsing healthcare system in Gaza. My first journey was in March and I returned for an additional mission earlier this month, earlier than the Israeli military assault on Rafah, in southern Gaza, which has been catastrophic. Now we’ve no means out.
Israel’s seizure of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt has difficult our medical staff’s departure from Gaza, which was coordinated with the World Well being Group and scheduled for Monday.
Now we have been on the European Hospital in Khan Yunis, close to Rafah. If we depart, and no new mission can get in, the sufferers right here will probably be deserted and terrified. Greater than 1 million people had taken refuge in Rafah throughout the Israeli bombardment of northern Gaza, and hundreds of thousands have now been compelled to flee the world amid Israel’s offensive here.
Our sufferers ask me the place they need to go, to which hospital. They inform me that some services are nonetheless open and ask my opinion of them. What do I say? The sufferers know full nicely in regards to the destruction of the Al Shifa and Nasser hospitals. They know sufferers have been killed with IV strains and catheters nonetheless inside, they usually consider that will probably be their destiny as nicely if they’re left alone and susceptible to the Israeli forces.
In the meantime, restricted humanitarian assist is getting in. The medical provides coming into Gaza usually are available in with new volunteers. I introduced eight items of checked baggage, stuffed with wound-care provides for this mission. We get sufferers with wounds over 60% to 80% of their our bodies, however we don’t even have absorbent pads to maintain their wounds dry, which is critical to forestall hypothermia.
The Rafah invasion can also be worsening the displacement of each the sufferers’ and the medical employees’s households. Given the hospital’s staffing shortages, households are doing half the work of the nurses. They assist flip sufferers. They assist change their diapers. They switch them to the clinic and again to the ward. They feed them. The sufferers could be nowhere with out their households.
If the hospital have been deserted or their households have been compelled to evacuate, I’ve no clue how these sufferers would survive, particularly these with amputations limiting their motion. I think about the sufferers saying a last goodbye to their family members.
Some docs and nurses have been volunteering right here for a very long time. A few of us have been to Gaza a number of occasions. But we proceed to be shocked by the cruelty. We’re not used to this diploma of carnage. Even the native employees continues to be shocked.
The native medical employees have averted telling the sufferers that our staff could must evacuate earlier than the subsequent set of assist staff can arrive, for worry it could trigger an enormous panic. No one likes speaking about evacuation. I can inform they don’t even like to make use of the phrase. Even when as docs, we will’t save folks given the restricted assets, at the very least as foreigners, we will present some safety, standing as a defend in opposition to a possible bloodbath of the sufferers.
We’re nonetheless working with the WHO to depart safely, regardless of the Rafah border closing. Although, it’s disturbing that on our deliberate exit date, a United Nations-marked vehicle was shot at and a foreign aid worker killed.
Within the meantime, we are going to proceed to see our sufferers and supply medical care for so long as we’re right here. Our organization’s subsequent staff is ready in Cairo, hoping to begin their mission.
I stay impressed by the fortitude of the folks I’ve met. When a few of my sufferers are beneath acutely aware sedation for his or her dressing adjustments, their internal selves come out, and lots of of them name to God. One affected person repeated the shahada — the Muslim testimony of religion. One other whose voice I hadn’t heard earlier than raised his palms to the air as he woke, making dua, a prayer of supplication to God.
I hope that the border crossing will reopen and {that a} new staff with extra assets will arrive. I hope for a cease-fire to finish this man-made humanitarian catastrophe. For now, so long as I’m able to testify to the power of individuals in Gaza and share that with the world, I’m honored to be amongst these people, who’ve given me greater than I’ve given them.
Mahmoud Sabha is a wound care doctor from La Palma, Calif., residing in Dallas.