A medical staff provides aid to injured people in a hospital in the Gaza Strip (Al Jazeera)
An American doctor named Irvan Galaria wrote in the Los Angeles Times that he left his home in Virginia late last month, where he works as a plastic and reconstructive surgeon, and joined a group of doctors and nurses who traveled to volunteer in Gaza, and that he saw that what was happening there was not a war. Rather, annihilation.
Gallaria said that during a trip from Cairo to the Gaza border that took about 12 hours, he saw stopped humanitarian aid trucks stretching for miles, because they were not allowed to enter Gaza.
He pointed out that what the international organization Save the Children said was that the number of children killed in Gaza during the month of October alone exceeds the number of those killed in all conflict zones in the world during 2022.
In his account of his observations, Gallaria said, “We entered southern Gaza on January 29, where many had fled the north. It felt like the first pages of a dystopian novel. Our ears became numb with the constant buzzing of what we were told were constantly flying Israeli surveillance drones. The smell of waste was overwhelming.” Humans resulting from the crowding of about a million people into a narrow space without sanitary facilities, our noses and our eyes were lost in the sea of tents.
The doctor added, "We stayed in a guest house in Rafah. Our first night was cold, and many of us could not sleep. We stood on a balcony listening to the bombs, and seeing smoke rising from Khan Yunis."
Not a safe haven
The doctor continued, "When we approached Gaza's European Hospital the next day, there were rows of tents lining and blocking the streets. Many Palestinians crowded into these and other hospitals in the hope that they would represent a refuge from the violence, but they were wrong."
He added, "People spread out in the hospital. They live in corridors, stairwells and even storage lockers, and the corridors designed by the European Union to accommodate the busy traffic of medical staff, stretchers and equipment have shrunk to one narrow corridor."
On either side, Galaria says, blankets were hung from the ceiling to create small areas for entire families, providing a measure of privacy. The hospital, designed to accommodate about 300 patients, was full with more than a thousand patients and hundreds more seeking shelter.
According to the doctor, "There was a limited number of local surgeons available. We were told that many had been killed or arrested, and their whereabouts or even their fate were unknown. Others were trapped in occupied areas in the north or in nearby places where going to the hospital was risky."
His wife and daughter were not killed
In his version of events, the doctor says that “there was only one local plastic surgeon left who covered the hospital around the clock. His house had been destroyed, so he lived in the hospital, and was able to stuff all his personal belongings into two small handbags.” This account became very popular among "The rest of the staff are at the hospital. This surgeon was lucky, because his wife and daughter were still alive, even though everyone else who worked at the hospital had lost at least one of their loved ones."
He added, "I started working immediately, and I continued to perform between 10 and 12 surgeries a day, and I worked for 14 to 16 hours without stopping. The operating room was constantly shaking due to continuous explosions, which were repeated, sometimes, every 30 seconds. We worked in Unsterile places are unimaginable in the United States.”
Amputation with a traditional saw
Gallaria continues, “The medical tools we had were limited, and we amputated arms and legs daily, using the Gigli medical saw, which is a tool from the Civil War era in America, which is basically a piece of barbed wire. Many amputations could have been avoided if they had been We have regular medical equipment."
“I was listening to my patients whisper their stories to me, as I took them to the operating room for surgery. Most of them were sleeping in their homes, when they were bombed. I couldn’t think that the lucky ones died immediately.”
The doctor added, "The survivors faced hours of surgery and multiple trips to the operating room, all while most of them mourned the loss of their children and spouses. Their bodies were full of shrapnel that had to be surgically removed from their flesh, piece by piece."
Who takes care of orphans?
Gallaria confirms that he "stopped tracking the number of new orphans who underwent surgery. After the surgery, they are taken somewhere in the hospital, and I do not know who will take care of them or how they will survive."
“One time, a few children between the ages of 5 and 8 were taken to the emergency room by their parents. They were all wounded by sniper bullets in the head. These families were returning to their homes in Khan Yunis, about 4 kilometers from the hospital, After the Israeli tanks withdrew, but it seemed that the snipers remained behind, and none of these children survived.”
From Gaza with love
On his last day in Gaza, Galaria says, “When I returned to the guest house where the locals knew the foreigners were staying, a little boy ran up and handed me a small gift. It was a rock from the beach, with an Arabic inscription marked ‘From Gaza, with love, on Despite the pain."
“While I was standing on the balcony looking at Rafah for the last time, we could hear the movement of marches, the sounds of explosions, and machine gun fire, but something was different this time: the voices were louder, and the explosions were closer.”
“And this week, Israeli forces raided another major hospital in Gaza, and are planning a ground attack in Rafah. I feel incredibly guilty that I was able to leave while millions are forced to endure the nightmare in Gaza.”
The doctor concludes his story by saying, "As an American, I think that the tax dollars I pay could be used to buy weapons to injure or kill my patients. These people have no other place to turn."
Source: Los Angeles Times