Today, Tuesday, World Health Organization officials expressed their concern about the possibility of the collapse of hospitals in the southern and central Gaza Strip, with many medical personnel and patients fleeing for their lives.
Only approximately one-third of Gaza’s hospitals are functioning, and some of them are only partially functioning, as a result of the Israeli bombing that has continued for months on the Strip. The fighting is intense in central and southern Gaza, increasing pressure on overburdened hospitals that remain open.
Sean Casey, coordinator of the World Health Organization’s emergency medical teams in Gaza, told a press conference in Geneva via video link, “What we are seeing around Al-Aqsa Hospital and the intensification of hostilities very close to the Gaza European Hospital and Nasser (Hospital) raises real concern.”
He added, “We cannot lose these health facilities. They must definitely be protected. They are the last line of secondary health care and the last in Gaza from north to south, and they are destroying one hospital after another.”
He stated that patients are risking their lives to reach hospitals in the city of Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip on Tuesday due to the continuing fighting.
Patients flee
During his visit to Al-Aqsa Hospital in central Gaza two days ago, Casey discovered that 70% of his employees had left their jobs. He said that hundreds of patients who were well enough to escape did the same thing that same night.
He added that many workers at Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis also joined hundreds of thousands of Gazans crowded into shelters in the far south of the Strip. He said there was only one doctor for more than 100 burn patients there.
He added, “We still see that the health system is suffering, and health workers cannot go to their workplaces to care for patients because they fear for their lives… Patients and their families are afraid to go to hospitals because they may die on the way.”
He added, “We are witnessing the collapse of the health system at a very rapid pace.”
Rick Peppercorn, the representative of the World Health Organization in the occupied Palestinian territories, said in the same press conference that delivering medical aid into Gaza has become difficult for the organization.
He added, “We are witnessing a complex and shrinking humanitarian field due to the extension of hostilities to the south and the difficulty of working there.”