Caroline Willemen, a Medicins Sans Frontieres (MSF) project coordinator working in Gaza City, has told Al Jazeera that every day she sees the physical and mental health ravages of the war.
She noted that while prosthetic limbs and other medical equipment for amputees were limited before the war, the situation has reached “absolutely dystopian, horrendous” numbers. Those who have recently lost limbs struggle to heal amid the malnutrition and lack of clean water.
“They are not healing the way they should, because on top of everything, people are not just wounded, they also don’t have access to sufficient food,” Willemen said. “Many of them are living in tents without access to water.”
Willemen also discussed the mental health toll the ongoing fighting has taken on those in Gaza, describing a recent conversation she had with an 11-year-old patient.
“We were joking together, and then she tells me, very seriously, ‘I wish a very big bomb would fall all over Gaza and we could die all at the same time, instead of dying very slowly, one day at a time,’” she said. “For me, that encapsulates what is happening to the soul, the spirit of people here.”
While Willemen explained the dire conditions and acknowledged how far off future reconstruction and rehabilitation remain, she said she is given hope every day by her Palestinian colleagues.
“I have never seen more humanity than I have encountered in Gaza, and that is the one thing that gives me hope that, yes, it is possible,” she said.
“We need the international community to step up to their moral obligation to make this stop and to help the recovery. But I have an unwavering belief in the fact that it is possible when I see Palestinian colleagues work every single day.”
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