Earlier than Israel’s invasion of Gaza final 12 months, Dr. Mahmoud Al-Reqeb labored in one of many Palestinian territory’s largest hospitals and had a personal clinic, caring for ladies all through their pregnancies.
Now, he lives in a plastic tent in Rafah, a Palestinian border city the place roughly half of Gaza’s inhabitants has sought refuge, and treats sufferers for no cost in one other tent. Dwelling below Israeli bombardment, with shortages of meals and clear water, the pregnant girls he serves wrestle to seek out fundamental security and nourishment, not to mention prenatal care.
For the reason that Israeli army started bombarding Gaza six months in the past following the Hamas-led Oct. 7 assault, its forces have wrecked total hospitals, struck ambulances and killed or detained tons of of well being care staff. Israeli restrictions on items getting into Gaza have prevented lifesaving medical provides from reaching sufferers, in accordance with assist teams. And shortages of gasoline, water and meals have made it troublesome for medical staff to supply fundamental providers.
The end result has been the close to collapse of a well being care system that after served Gaza’s inhabitants of greater than two million. By late March, of the 36 large-scale hospitals throughout Gaza, solely 10 had been “minimally useful,” in accordance with the World Well being Group.
Israeli officers say that medical facilities have been targets as a result of Hamas fighters embed themselves inside and below the amenities, and that it’s the solely technique to root out the armed group. Hamas and medical staff have denied this accusation. Help teams, researchers and worldwide our bodies have more and more been calling Israel’s dismantling of Gaza’s medical capability “systematic.”
“Should you engineered the destruction of a well being care system, you’ll find yourself precisely the place we’re at present,” stated Ciarán Donnelly, a senior vice chairman on the Worldwide Rescue Committee, an assist group that has been working in Gaza.
Mr. Donnelly stated he had labored within the humanitarian assist sector for 20 years and couldn’t consider some other conflict by which a medical system had been so totally crushed so rapidly.
Requested for remark, the Israeli army referred to earlier statements it has made about Hamas fighters’ embedding themselves in amenities. Proof examined by The New York Instances suggests Hamas has used Al Shifa Hospital — which the Israeli army has raided — for canopy, saved weapons inside it and maintained a prolonged tunnel. The Israeli army has not offered equally expansive proof about a lot of the different well being care facilities it has attacked.
Dr. Al-Reqeb’s outdated facility, Nasser Hospital, was raided by Israeli troops in February. When he goes to his new job, at an Emirati-funded hospital — one of many few amenities in Gaza offering specialised gynecological and obstetric providers — he’s one among fewer than 10 docs treating 500 sufferers a day with a “extreme lack of provides, employees, drugs and tools,” he stated.
“I used to be very shocked after I realized the extent of injury the medical system is struggling,” Dr. Al-Reqeb, 33, stated in a phone interview. “It’s utterly destroyed.”
The devastation of the medical system has rippled all through Gaza. Most cancers sufferers have needed to halt chemotherapy. Folks with kidney failure have misplaced entry to lifesaving dialysis. Pregnant girls have gone with out the monitoring that would assist establish life-threatening situations like pre-eclampsia.
“Typically I cry,” stated Dr. Zaki Zakzook, an oncologist who was as soon as one among Gaza’s pre-eminent most cancers docs and now lives in a tent along with his household in Khan Younis. “I’m watching my sufferers being executed, slowly and step by step.”
Dr. Zakzook has been in a position to do little for his sufferers for the reason that conflict compelled the closing of the most cancers hospital the place he labored, he stated. He now sees sufferers at a hospital within the south however not offers them chemotherapy, fearing that doing so would weaken their immune techniques at a time when the medical system is unable to deal with an infection, he stated. As an alternative, he affords palliative care, like painkillers.
“I’m making an attempt to do my greatest, others are attempting the identical, however what can we do?” he stated.
In February, Israeli forces stormed Nasser Hospital, a big facility in Khan Younis. They shelled the hospital’s orthopedic division and detained dozens of well being care staff, in accordance with Docs With out Borders, an assist group whose employees members witnessed the assault.
“The proof at our disposal factors to deliberate and repeated assaults by Israeli forces towards Nasser Hospital, its sufferers and its medical employees,” the group wrote. The Israeli army stated it had been looking for Hamas fighters and the our bodies of Israelis taken captive throughout the Oct. 7 assault.
In March, the Israeli army raided Al Shifa Hospital for a second time, killing practically 200 individuals it referred to as terrorists. Israeli troops left widespread devastation of their wake after prolonged gun battles with Palestinian militants in and across the advanced. It stated its troops had come below fireplace from gunmen inside and round one of many hospital’s buildings. The Gazan authorities stated that 200 civilians had died within the raid. Neither assertion might be independently verified.
After the raid, the hospital premises had been affected by our bodies and shallow graves, in accordance with the World Well being Group, which led a workforce this month to guage the hospital’s situation.
In a press release after its go to, the W.H.O. stated the hospital was “an empty shell,” with no sufferers and most of its tools “unusable or lowered to ashes.”
“There’s rising proof {that a} crimson cross or crimson crescent truly places a goal on you, reasonably than the opposite means round, and it’s simply an appalling degradation of human values,” stated Dr. Tim Goodacre, a surgeon who has been touring to Gaza for years to assist practice Palestinian docs and volunteered at a hospital there in January.
Earlier than the conflict, Abdulaziz Saeed’s 63-year-old father was anticipating to obtain a kidney transplant in March. Mr. Saeed and his mom had each been accepted as potential donors. Then the conflict started. The physician who was to carry out the operation was killed, Mr. Saeed stated, and “all our plans have been canceled.”
His household now shares its residence with dozens of displaced individuals within the metropolis of Deir al Balah, and his father, who beforehand wanted three dialysis periods every week for renal failure, is ready to obtain just one every week at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital.
“The most important subject is the dearth of medical employees,” Mr. Saeed stated. “There was three specialised docs within the kidney division. Two of them had been killed, and the third is unreachable.”
Anas Saad, a 24-year-old nurse on the hospital, stated lots of his colleagues had give up after the repeated assaults on medical amenities.
“That is not a secure place,” Mr. Saad stated. “I’m doing my greatest to assist individuals survive. Nonetheless, it’s turning into extraordinarily dangerous, as hospitals will be stormed or bombed anytime.”
Dr. Tanya Haj Hassan, an American pediatric intensive-care physician, lately entered Gaza as a part of a workforce of international docs to volunteer on the hospital. She described “apocalyptic” scenes, together with a woman who, she stated, died after an Israeli bulldozer ran over a tent, crushing her, and a boy in a wheelchair whose total household had been killed however who believed that his dad and mom had been coming to get him as a result of “no one has the center to inform him.” Her account couldn’t be independently verified.
The whole thing of Gaza “simply feels prefer it was hit by a nuclear bomb,” she stated. “The fact is, they’ve taken out hospital at a time. ‘Hospital at a time’ — I can’t consider I’m even saying these phrases.”
Hwaida Saad contributed reporting from Beirut, Lebanon, and Johnatan Reiss from Tel Aviv.
