Dr. Najdat Saqr was forced to abandon his medical center in Nuseirat Roundabout early in the war after several Israeli attacks (French)
Palestinian dentist Najdat Saqr began treating his patients in a tent in the Nuseirat camp, amid the roar of Israeli drones and the sounds of gunfire, using what remained of his clinic’s equipment, which was destroyed by the war in the central Gaza Strip.
The doctor hangs all his professional certificates on the wall to reassure his patients, and his equipment is modern, albeit placed on a plastic sheet in the sand.
Najdat Saqr (32 years old) says that he was forced to abandon his medical center in the Nuseirat roundabout early in the war after “several Israeli attacks” that “led to serious damage to my clinic.”
The bombing destroyed much of the clinic, and the dentist showed AFP on his tablet how shrapnel pierced its iron door.
But as the war continued and Gaza's health system collapsed, Saqr returned to try to recover what he could to help people who came to him complaining of toothaches.
He added, "Most of the dentists traveled outside the country, and the rest had their clinics damaged and they were unable to open them, so I came up with the idea of a dental tent."
To embody the idea, "I went to the center, reclaimed one of the chairs, transported it by tuk-tuk here, set up a tent, and reclaimed the equipment, materials, and tools."
Despite the fighting taking place not far from his alternative clinic in Nuseirat, Saqr maintains his cool, calming down a young boy treating him while the roar of drones drowns out the sound of dental drills.
very expensive
The doctor explains, “The biggest obstacles I face in the tent are the provision of electricity, water, and dental materials. Unfortunately, they are not available, and even if they were available, they would be at extremely high prices.”
The United Nations warns that the health system in Gaza is on the verge of collapse, as none of the Strip's hospitals have operated at full capacity during the past two months.
Fierce fighting has also been taking place for weeks around a number of hospitals that were also a refuge for thousands who lost their homes or fled the fighting.
The World Health Organization announced on Saturday that about 9,000 patients in the besieged Palestinian Strip need to be evacuated to receive emergency care.
“With only 10 minimally functioning hospitals in all of Gaza, thousands of patients are still deprived of health care,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the United Nations, said on the X platform.
Before the war, Gaza had 36 hospitals, according to World Health Organization figures.
The Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip since October 7 has led to the death of 32,705 people, according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza, most of them children and women.
Source: Al Jazeera + French