Major health organizations have sounded alarm bells on the collapse of vital medical services at Gaza’s largest functioning health facility, amid Israel’s relentless bombardment in Khan Younis in southern Gaza.
The charity organization Doctors Without Borders, known by its French acronym MSF, said in a statement on Saturday that services at Nasser Hospital have collapsed, leaving people with no options to go for treatment.
It said most of the staff at Nasser Hospital, along with thousands of displaced people sheltering in the facility, fled in the days leading up to the evacuation order by Israel military forces.
“The hospital’s surgical capacity is now almost non-existent, and the handful of medical staff remaining in the hospital must contend with very low supplies that are insufficient to handle mass casualty events – large influxes of wounded people,” MSF said in a statement.
MSF said at least one patient at the hospital died on Wednesday because there was no orthopedic surgeon available.
“Between 300 and 350 patients remain at Nasser Hospital, unable to evacuate because it is too dangerous and there are no ambulances.”
MSF’s medical coordinator in Palestine Guillemette Thomas said that Nasser and the European Gaza Hospital are “unreachable” and there is no longer a health care system in Gaza.
“These systematic attacks against health care are unacceptable and must end now so that the wounded can get the care they need. The entire health system has been rendered inoperative,” Thomas said.
A doctor at Nasser Hospital was shocked when he realized the wounded patient he was attempting to resuscitate was his friend.
He passed away on the hospital floor. pic.twitter.com/y0uxI57EZA
— TIMES OF GAZA (@Timesofgaza) January 26, 2024
The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday that fighting continues in the vicinity of the hospital and the facility “is running out of fuel, food and supplies.”
“We appeal for an immediate ceasefire so that we can replenish urgently needed lifesaving supplies,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus wrote on X.
Israel started its genocidal war on Gaza after it was caught off guard by Hamas’s unprecedented operation against the regime on October 7, 2023.
At least 26,083 Palestinians have so far been killed, and 64,487 wounded in Gaza, a majority of whom are women and children, according to the latest figures from the Gaza Health Ministry.
