The state of Gaza’s hospitals: Surgeries without anesthesia and with only mobile phones for light. Vinegar from the corner store as disinfectant. 5,000 patients in a hospital built for 700, some sleeping on the floor. No power, no clean water, little fuel.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — The only thing worse than the screams of a patient undergoing surgery without enough anesthesia are the terror-stricken faces of those awaiting their turn, a 51-year-old orthopedic surgeon says.
If more aid doesn’t come in, I fear we’ll get to the point where going to a hospital will do more harm than good,” Mehdat Abbas, an official in the Hamas-run Health Ministry, said.
When Israel cut fuel to the territory’s sole power plant two weeks ago, Gaza’s rumbling generators kicked in to keep life-support equipment running in hospitals.
At Nasser Hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis this week, nurses and surgical assistants held their iPhones over the operating table, guiding the surgeons with the flashlights as they snipped.
At Shifa Hospital, Gaza’s biggest, where Abed also worked this week, the intensive care unit runs on generators but most other wards are without power.
The scenes — infants arriving alone to intensive care because no one else in their family survived, patients awake and grimacing in pain during surgeries — have traumatized Abed into numbness.
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