WHO reports 59 attacks on Gaza’s health facilities, including damage to 26 hospitals

Gaza’s hospitals are overwhelmed by injured and dying Palestinians, while Israel continues its relentless bombardment of the narrow coastal strip and maintains a blockade on fuel for the power plant, transport and hospital generators.

United Nations and international relief organisations say the limited deliveries of medical supplies, water and food that began on Saturday cannot address the humanitarian catastrophe engulfing 1.6 million displaced Gazans, half of whom are children.

Jerusalem-based Médecins Sans Frontiers (MSF) humanitarian affairs manager Frederieke van Dongen told The Irish Times that arriving aid “is not even a drop in an ocean. Before the war there were 48 trucks of medical supplies a month and 73 trucks of food per day.”

A first convoy of 20 trucks of supplies entered Gaza on Saturday through Rafah border crossing with Egypt on Saturday, and a further 14 trucks on Sunday.

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Van Dongen said supplies could not be distributed without fuel and security. MSF doctors “are used to work in conflict situations but Israel is not following the rules of war. Medical staff are not protected,” she said. Although Israel had called on Gazans living in the north to move to the south, “colleagues [there] say during the past two nights indiscriminate bombing has been worse than ever”.

Since Hamas’s October 7th attack, which killed 1,400 mostly civilians in Israel, the World Health Organisation has reported 59 attacks on Gaza’s healthcare facilities, including damage to 26 hospitals. Seven no longer function, the WHO reported.

Israel has ordered 23 hospitals in the more populous north, including those in Gaza City, to evacuate. Many have refused.

“Forcing more than 2,000 patients to relocate to southern Gaza, where health facilities are already running at maximum capacity and unable to absorb a dramatic rise in the number of patients, could be tantamount to a death sentence,” the WHO said in a statement.

Gaza City’s Shifa hospital, its largest and best equipped, which has a capacity of 700 is treating 5,000, director Mohammed Abu Selma told the Associated Press Wounded patients lie on floors or on gurneys in corridors where doctors are forced to operate.

Al-Quds hospital surgeon Nidal Abed said wounds were washed with saline fluid and polluted tap water if available, household vinegar had replaced medical disinfectants, bandages were made from torn clothing, antibiotics were rationed and sewing needles were used to stitch wounds.

In many hospitals there is electricity only for intensive care units and incubators for premature babies. Shifa hospital has shut down seven incubators for critical cases in order to conserve power for babies who could survive. Operations have been conducted by phone flashlights.

At least 12 doctors, 14 nurses, 14 paramedics and 21 other medical staff in Gaza have been killed, health authorities say. Shifa hospital’s blast and burn specialist Medhat Sedim was killed along with 35 family members by an Israeli air strike during a brief visit home after a week on duty, according to the Palestinian health ministry. Three surgeons with his expertise remain.

The medical community and public have been shocked by the death of Omar Ferwana, who specialised in gynaecology and male reproductive dysfunction. Three generations of his family were killed in an Israeli bombing, including his daughter Aya, also a doctor. A Leeds University physiology PhD, he was known as the “people’s doctor” as he divided his day between non-paying and paying patients.