Gaza’s Health Ministry said that a lack of supplies is putting vulnerable patients, including 130 premature babies, at risk, while hospitals being overwhelmed by huge numbers of casualties and civilians seeking shelter from Israeli bombing.
“We have part of the hospitals now without electricity, we have the ICUs without water now,” Dr Mohammed Qandeel from Nasser Hospital told Al Jazeera.
Doctors forced to operate with little or no anaesthesia, or by the light of mobile phones, and using vinegar in some cases in place of antiseptic.
Meanwhile, more than 20 hospitals in north and central Gaza, representing the bulk of the Gaza health service, have been told to evacuate by the Israeli army – an order doctors say is impossible to carry out.
“We have no fuel to run the standby generators, and those who are affected first are the operation rooms, the intensive care units and emergency rooms,” Dr Medhat Abbass, the director general of the Gaza health ministry, said.
“We have mass casualties in the hospitals dealing with surgical cases. The problem is that the staff are exhausted and we have no medical supplies. We are consuming in a day what we used to consume in a month.”
“We are operating on some patients in the corridors of the hospitals,” Abbass said. “We are operating on them on the ground by the light of the mobile phones, and some of them were operated on without anaesthesia.”
