9/5/2024–|Last updated: 5/9/202407:04 PM (Mecca time)
Palestinian Suad Zuhair (73 years old) receives a lifeline by using a dialysis machine 3 days a week in a hospital in Rafah, but this hospital has become closed due to the Israeli aggression.
Her daughter took the risk of transporting her along a coastal road leading to the last hospital that still had dialysis machines in the Gaza Strip.
In a crowded room, blood flowed through tubes from her hand to the machine.
Dr. Saeed Al-Khattab, head of the artificial kidney department at Shuhada Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip, said, “There is only this hospital left that serves the entire Gaza Strip and serves approximately a thousand kidney failure patients.”
There are 19 devices in place. The letter said that medical staff members keep it working around the clock, with 200 sessions being carried out daily and not enough time to sterilize it between patients.
Souad Zuhair’s treatment was supposed to last 4 hours, but according to harsh medical calculations in Gaza, she can only use the device for two hours. No one can predict when you might get another chance to use it.
Her daughter, Umm Bilal, said, “She will be tired. Maybe tomorrow? After that? We won’t know how to get her here or where to go (…) She is always tired. In our area, we used to go to Al-Najjar Hospital, which is close to us (…) But how do we stay here if she gets tired of us at night? No. An ambulance and a danger zone, there is no ambulance that will come to us or anything else.”
Collapse
Doctors say that the Israeli aggression in the vicinity of Rafah, located at the southern end of the Gaza Strip, destroyed what remained of the health system in the Strip. Tanks are gathering on the outskirts of the city, and a large number of sick and wounded have nowhere to go and there are no safe roads to reach their destinations.
The aggression led to the closure of some major medical facilities that were serving half of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million who were displaced to Rafah. The two crossings leading to southern Gaza were also closed, preventing the arrival of basic supplies such as fuel, although Israel says it reopened the Kerem Shalom crossing – yesterday, Wednesday – and is trying to bring aid through it.
Al-Najjar Hospital in Rafah, where Souad Zuhair was undergoing dialysis, closed suddenly as the fighting approached.
The closure of the only crossing leading to Egypt means that it is no longer possible to evacuate patients in need of emergency medical care from the Gaza Strip. Volunteer foreign paramedics are also no longer able to enter or return to their homes.
loss
Meanwhile, the sick and wounded flock to Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah. Ali Abu Kharmah, a Jordanian laparoscopic surgeon who volunteers at the hospital, said, “The shortage that occurred (…) was in the intervention of medical supplies (…) now (currently) there are no medical supplies. I mean, we have operations in the first place that do not have gauze that we use, which is an abdominal band. There is nothing for us to use (…) I mean, there is nothing for us to wear. We don’t have to do an operation, just gloves. You want to wear clothes, you want to cover the patient, you want to sterilize all of this. This is the effect of closing the crossing on us.”
“There are no beds available for patients,” he told Reuters, while one of the patients could be heard screaming in pain from behind one of the closed doors. “Patients are present throughout the hospital, in the corridors, in the halls, everywhere. In some beds there are one patient and two patients, in the reception there are patients.” Directly on the ground (…) We evaluate them and examine them directly on the ground. How many operations are frightening… It means (…) The staff is working almost 24 hours a day.
He added, “The medical situation is very critical. In fact, it is collapsed. The entire medical sector is collapsed.”