Gaza’s healthcare system has collapsed due to the relentless and systematic Israeli attacks on hospitals, ambulances and medical crews during the ongoing genocidal war on Gaza.
Major health organizations sounded the alarm and called for an immediate ceasefire as vital medical services have collapsed at Nasser Hospital, the largest functioning healthcare facility in the Strip.
Running Out of Food, Fuel – WHO
The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday that 350 patients and 5,000 displaced residents remain at Nasser Hospital which is running out of fuel, food and supplies in southern Gaza.
As fighting intensifies around the hospital in Khan Yunis, hundreds of patients and health workers have fled, according to Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
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
“Currently 350 patients and 5000 displaced people remain at the hospital. The hospital is running out of fuel, food and supplies,” he wrote on X, with an accompanying video from the hospital.
Ghebreyesus said fighting continues in the vicinity of the hospital and noted access for resupplying the “remains challenging.”
“We appeal for an immediate ceasefire so that we can replenish urgently needed lifesaving supplies,” he said.
‘No Options Left’ – MSF
Doctors Without Borders (MSF) expressed concern Friday about the heavy bombing in southern Gaza, warning that vital medical services have collapsed at Nasser Hospital, the largest functioning healthcare facility in the Strip.
MSF said it deplores a situation in which “people have been left with no options.”
“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,” the international medical care organization said in a statement.
Scores of Palestinians Killed as Israel Continues to Commit Massacres in Gaza
At least one patient at the hospital died on Wednesday because there was no orthopedic surgeon available, MSF said, adding that “Between 300 and 350 patients remain at Nasser Hospital, unable to evacuate because it is too dangerous and there are no ambulances”.
Guillemette Thomas, MSF’s medical coordinator in Palestine, said that Nasser and the European Gaza Hospital are almost inaccessible 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,” she said.
According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, 26,083 Palestinians have been killed, and 64,487 wounded in Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza starting on October 7.
Palestinian and international estimates say that the majority of those killed and wounded are women and children.
(PC, Anadolu)
