Highlights: For several days, the fighting between the Israeli army and Hamas in the Palestinian enclave has crystallized around the hospital complexes. In the north of the enclave, RFI was able to reach a doctor by telephone. He talks about how, even to treat patients, he only has system D left. “Some died before our eyes, sometimes because all that was missing was a simple medical tool to save them,” Dr Mahmoud al-Shurafa tells RFI. He adds that he never would have imagined working one day in such conditions.

For several days, the fighting between the Israeli army and Hamas in the Palestinian enclave has crystallized around the hospital complexes. Particularly those in the cities of Gaza and…

Gaza: “Some died before our eyes, sometimes because all that was missing was a simple medical tool”

For several days, the fighting between the Israeli army and Hamas in the Palestinian enclave has crystallized around the hospital complexes. Particularly those in the cities of Gaza and Khan Younes. It must be said that the intensity of the clashes has not decreased, despite the vote on Monday of a UN Security Council resolution calling for an “immediate ceasefire”. And the state of Gaza's health system is now close to nothing. In the north of the enclave, RFI was able to reach a doctor by telephone. He talks about how, even to treat patients, he only has system D left.

A man on an IV, supported by another man, in front of a hospital in Gaza City, this Wednesday March 27, 2024. AFP - -

By: RFI Follow

Testimony in Gaza collected by our correspondent in Ramallah,

Alice Froussard

Before the war, this small room was a chemistry laboratory in a school in

Gaza

City . But for lack of hospitals, for lack of buildings still standing, it has become a makeshift medical center, one of the only ones still treating people remaining in the north of the Gaza Strip.

This is what one of his doctors, Mahmoud al-Shurafa, explains: “

Every day the situation is getting worse and worse. It's really very difficult as a doctor to tell patients who arrive seriously injured that we no longer have the means to treat them, that we lack the means to disinfect, sew up, and all that, because we lack equipment. medical.

He specifies: with nearby shootings and bombings, transfers of patients to real hospitals are almost impossible. “

Some died before our eyes,”

confides Mahmoud al-Shurafa.

And sometimes, it was because all that was missing was a simple medical tool to save them.

It leaves a constant lump in our throat. I remember the worst was this old man: he arrived with shrapnel in his neck. His condition required urgent surgery in a hospital. We knew we couldn't help him in this place. We took a car, but it was already too late. He bled to death and died in our arms.

So, with non-existent medications – painkillers, anesthetics –, spreading diseases and a glaring lack of resources, Dr Mahmoud al-Shurafa says he is doing, with his teams, “

what he can

”. And he added that he never would have imagined working one day in such conditions.

To rereadUN resolution for a ceasefire in Gaza: anger from Israel, hope and caution among the Palestinians

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Gaza
Palestinian territories
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Health and medicine
Israelo-Palestinian conflict

Gaza: “Some died before our eyes, sometimes because all that was missing was a simple medical tool”

Gaza: “Some died before our eyes, sometimes because all that was missing was a simple medical tool”

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