The few remaining hospitals and clinics in central and southern Gaza are being overwhelmed by a “tsunami” of injured and sick patients fleeing a new Israeli offensive in the north, medics have warned. At Nasser medical complex in Khan Younis and field hospitals in al-Muwasi, staff are struggling to cope with large numbers of new arrivals forced out of Gaza City.
“We are seeing more people every day from the north with blast and bullet injuries, with old, dirty and infected wounds,” said Dr Martin Griffiths, a consultant trauma surgeon from Barts NHS health trust who is volunteering in Gaza. “Every one is hungry, malnourished, has lost their home and loved ones, and every one is scared. We have not got enough of anything.”
Griffiths said the emergency department of the 90-bed field hospital where he works in al-Muwasi received 160 injured in a single night, with 600 people seeking treatment from its small primary health care clinic. Approximately 320,000 people have complied with Israeli evacuation orders and fled Gaza City, according to the UN, many of them sick, injured or malnourished.
The crisis has been worsened by the closure of several medical facilities in northern Gaza as Israel presses its offensive. At Nasser hospital, paediatric wards are treating new arrivals in corridors because all beds for children are full. “We are really just hanging on here. It is really bad. We are at our absolute limit,” said Mohamed Saqr, director of nursing at Nasser.
The Israeli military has told aid workers that only hospitals would be considered “protected” and that all other humanitarian sites in Gaza City must evacuate. The Jordanian field hospital in Tal al-Hawa received evacuation orders on Monday, with at least 300 patients inside. The Gaza health ministry said services had been suspended at al-Rantisi children’s hospital and the Eye hospital, while medics said al-Rantisi remained partly open as a first aid point, though continuous shelling has made it inaccessible.
