Officials from the World Health Organization (WHO) participated on Saturday in a joint mission of United Nations agencies to Al-Shifa hospital, in northern Gaza, to deliver medical supplies and assess the situation at the facilities, it was announced this week. Sunday.
According to a WHO statement, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the United Nations Department of Safety and Security (UNDSS) and the United Nations Mine Action Service participated in the mission. (UNDSS). (ONE MORE).
“The team delivered medications and surgical materials, orthopedic surgery equipment, as well as anesthetic materials and medications to the hospital,” the note reads.
The UN health agency highlighted that Al-Shifa Hospital, “currently minimally functional, urgently needs to resume at least basic operations to continue serving the thousands of people in need of life-saving healthcare.”
Al-Shifa, once Gaza’s largest and most important referral hospital, now houses only a few doctors and nurses, along with 70 volunteers, working in what WHO officials described as “incredibly difficult circumstances.” ” and they called it “a hospital that must be resurrected.”
“Operating rooms and other important services remain inoperable due to a lack of fuel, oxygen, specialized medical personnel and supplies,” the statement read.
“The hospital can only provide basic trauma stabilization, has no blood for transfusions and almost no staff to care for the constant flow of patients,” the WHO said, adding that dialysis is being “provided to approximately 30 patients per day, with dialysis machines that run 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, using a small generator.”
The team “described the emergency room as a ‘bloodbath’ with hundreds of injured patients inside and new patients arriving every minute,” patients with traumatic injuries “sewn to the floor” and no “pain control available in the hospital.” “.
WHO officials said that “the emergency room is so full that care must be taken not to step on patients on the floor” and that “critical patients are being transferred to Al-Ahli Arab Hospital for surgery.”
“Tens of thousands of displaced people are using the hospital building and grounds as shelter. A multifaceted humanitarian response is needed to provide them with food, water and shelter,” the note said, noting that many called on the team to “tell the world”. what is happening, in the hope that their suffering can soon be alleviated.
Al-Shifa Hospital continues to face severe shortages of food and drinking water for health workers, patients and displaced people, which WHO says “reflects serious and growing concerns around persistent hunger across the Gaza Strip and the consequences of malnutrition on people’s health and well-being. susceptibility to infectious diseases.
The UN agency said it was “committed to reinforcing Al-Shifa Hospital in the coming weeks, so that it can resume at least basic functionality and continue to provide the vital services needed at this critical time.”
“Up to 20 operating rooms in the hospital, as well as post-operative care services, can be activated if regular supplies of fuel, oxygen, medicines, food and water are provided. A considerable number of additional medical staff, from nursing and specialized support, including emergency medical equipment,” he advocated.
Al-Ahli Arab Hospital remains “the only partially functional hospital” in northern Gaza, along with three “minimally functional” hospitals – Al-Shifa, Al Awda and Al Sahaba Medical Complex – compared to 24. before the conflict” and the WHO is also “gravely concerned about the evolving situation at Kamal Adwan Hospital and is urgently collecting information.”
The organization concluded that as hostilities continue and health care needs increase throughout the Gaza Strip, Al-Shifa Hospital, “a cornerstone of Gaza’s health system, must be urgently restored” so that it can serve “a besieged people, trapped in a cycle of death, destruction, hunger and disease.
The war between Israel and Hamas, which entered its 72nd day, was triggered by a bloody and unprecedented attack carried out by the Palestinian Islamic movement on October 7 on Israeli soil from the Gaza Strip.
According to Israel, 1,139 people, most of them civilians, were killed in this attack and around 250 were kidnapped and taken to Gaza. According to the army, some 129 hostages remain in Gaza, including bodies.
Israel promised to “annihilate” Hamas, bombing the Palestinian territory, besieging it and carrying out, since October 27, a vast ground operation.
The Hamas Health Ministry reported Friday that 18,800 people were killed in the Israeli bombings, most of them women, children and teenagers.
Source: TSF
