British doctor of Palestinian origins, Basil Badir, said that medical teams in the Gaza Strip are exhausted and dealing with large numbers of patients and those with difficult and complex cases.
This came while he was at the European Gaza Hospital in the city of Khan Yunis, south of the Gaza Strip, which he arrived on December 25, accompanied by 4 doctors from the team affiliated with the Islamic Aid Organization (charity) in Britain.
The specialized orthopedic surgeon added that the medical staff in the hospital are very exhausted, and the emergency department always receives patients with difficult and complex cases.
He explained that the role of the British medical team is to try to alleviate the suffering of their colleagues working in the medical field in Gaza, even if only in a small way.
Badir described the doctors in the Gaza Strip as true heroes, adding, “We help the local team with injuries that arrive at the hospital on a daily basis, especially reattaching fractures.”
On the other hand, the surgeon said that the patients who were transferred from the northern Gaza Strip to the south suffer from difficult health complications as a result of not completing their treatment there.
He confirmed that many patients who underwent partial treatment in northern Gaza before the hospitals there were closed and were deported to the south suffered severe health complications due to failure to complete treatment.
Difficult health situation
More than once, the Ministry of Health in Gaza said that hospitals in northern Gaza were out of service, either because of the Israeli air strikes, their storming and evacuation, or because they ran out of fuel and medical supplies.
He pointed out the difficult health situation in the European Hospital, as the hospital includes at least about 900 patients and injured people, which constitutes double the capacity specified in normal times.
This medical team has been visiting the Gaza Strip periodically, 8-9 times a year, for about 13 years, where their work focuses on restoring limbs and injuries, according to Badir.
Last Sunday, the Director-General of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, in a blog post published on the X platform, described the destruction of the health system in the Gaza Strip as a tragedy.
Ghebreyesus said that in the face of continued insecurity and an influx of wounded patients, we see doctors, nurses, ambulance drivers and others continuing to strive to save lives.
The Israeli army is escalating its war on the Gaza Strip’s hospitals, medical teams, and the health sector, as part of a devastating war on Gaza that it has been waging since the seventh of last October, which, as of Saturday, has left 21,672 dead and 56,165 injured, most of them children and women, and massive destruction of infrastructure and a disaster. Unprecedented humanity, according to the Gaza Strip authorities and the United Nations.