How Gaza’s hospitals became a battleground against Israeli bombs

How Gaza’s hospitals became a battleground against Israeli bombs

LONDON: In Gaza’s overwhelmed hospitals, doctors, nurses and other medical staff are battling against what many fear could be their most insurmountable challenge in nearly two years of Israel’s war on the territory’s people — hunger.

“We go to work sometimes without eating and we treat patients while actually feeling dizzy, lightheaded and weak,” said Dr. Mohammed Abu Mughaisib, a physician working in the territory. “The starvation is not just hitting families in Gaza it’s hitting the health workers too.”

Gaza’s health sector has been decimated by Israel’s devastating military assault. Hospitals have been bombed, doctors killed and detained, and medical supplies cut off.

Beleaguered and bloodied, health care workers are now locked in a daily struggle against hunger and malnutrition affecting people across the entire territory.

If the medical staff cannot eat and are not strong enough to perform the painstaking work needed to treat a battered and malnourished population, the situation can only deteriorate.

In accounts provided to Arab News from medical charities, hospital workers have described their daily struggles to find enough food to sustain them through their long shifts and feed their families.

They describe colleagues fainting at work, struggling to continue their lifesaving care for those bombed, starved and shot at as they try to reach the meagre food supplies making it into the territory.

Abu Mughaisib, who is the deputy medical coordinator for Medecins Sans Frontieres in Gaza, said that despite the decades of conflict affecting the territory, he never imagined such a situation.

He said most days he and his colleagues eat only one basic meal of bread with canned food or lentils.

Some days the market is completely empty, and there are never any vegetables, fruit, or meat.

“Honestly, we don’t have options,” he said, almost anticipating that those outside of Gaza would not believe him.

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“In the hospitals there is no food for the medical staff. Some health workers faint during their shift. They clean the wounds, they deliver babies, and perform surgeries on empty stomachs.

“Some of my colleagues started to lose weight rapidly. Some of them cannot produce milk to breastfeed their babies. This is not just burnout this is real physical starvation.”

Dr. Saeed Salah, medical director of the Patient’s Friends Benevolent Society Hospital in northern Gaza, described the food shortages as the “greatest crisis” his colleagues and patients have faced.

“Some members of our medical staff themselves are malnourished and can no longer sustain the energy needed to perform their duties,” he said, in response to Arab News questions passed through the charity Medical Aid for Palestinians.

“Our emergency ward is overwhelmed with people who haven’t eaten for days and are in urgent need of IV fluids. In over 21 months of operating under crisis, we’ve never seen days like these.”

Summer Al-Jamal, a finance and admin assistant for MAP based at Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza, described the situation there as “deeply distressing.”

The hospital has been inundated with victims from shooting attacks on Palestinians gathered at aid distribution hubs nearby, as well as patients injured from Israeli bombings, or who are sick.

Increasingly, they have been treating malnourished families and their children.

“The hospital is heavily burdened with departments overwhelmed by trauma cases and critically injured patients,” she said after a recent visit to the facility. “The scale of suffering and the intensity of the emergency were unlike anything I had witnessed before.

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“The medical staff appear exhausted, physically and emotionally. Many looked pale, fatigued, and undernourished. The toll of the past weeks had left them drained.”

After Israel launched its latest Gaza campaign in response to the Hamas-led attack in October 2023, the territory’s health service soon came under fire.

Casualties surged into hospitals, and the facilities also became targets for Israeli airstrikes. Nearly two years into the conflict, the health service is broken.

Of the 36 hospitals in the territory before Israel’s current war on Gaza, only 18 remain partially operational, and less than 40 percent of primary health care facilities are still functional, according to the World Health Organization.

All the facilities have been damaged and are flooded with patients far beyond their maximum operating capacities.

Gaza’s Health Ministry says Israeli forces have killed more than 1,500 Palestinian health workers since October 2023, with the WHO recording at least 700 attacks on health care facilities in the territory.

Doctors and hospital staff have been detained, and more than 10,000 critically ill patients need to be evacuated.

And then there is the dwindling medical supplies. Israel imposed a complete 11-week blockade on Gaza in March, leading to desperate shortages of medicines and equipment for hospitals, along with basic food for the entire population.

The main UN agency distributing aid was forced to stop operating and was eventually replaced by the US- and Israeli-run Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. Some supplies have resumed but at a fraction of what aid agencies say is required.

The dire situation for the health sector was further exacerbated by the sharp increase in casualties last month as Israel ramped up its campaign in the face of an international outcry and widespread accusations of genocide.

The WHO reported 13,500 injuries in Gaza in July — the highest since the first three months of Israel’s war on the territory. Many of these took place when Israeli troops repeatedly opened fire on crowds of Palestinians as they waited to collect food from GHF distribution points.

How Gaza’s hospitals became a battleground against Israeli bombs

ARAB NEWS