Earlier than Israel’s invasion of Gaza final 12 months, Dr. Mahmoud Al-Reqeb labored in one of many Palestinian territory’s largest hospitals and had a non-public clinic, caring for ladies all through their pregnancies.
Now, he lives in a plastic tent in Rafah, a Palestinian border city the place roughly half of Gaza’s inhabitants has sought refuge, and treats sufferers for no cost in one other tent. Dwelling beneath Israeli bombardment, with shortages of meals and clear water, the pregnant girls he serves wrestle to seek out primary security and nourishment, not to mention prenatal care.
Because the Israeli army started bombarding Gaza six months in the past following the Hamas-led Oct. 7 assault, its forces have wrecked total hospitals, struck ambulances and killed or detained a whole lot of well being care employees. Israeli restrictions on items coming into Gaza have prevented lifesaving medical provides from reaching sufferers, in response to help teams. And shortages of gas, water and meals have made it troublesome for medical employees to supply primary companies.
The end result has been the close to collapse of a well being care system that when served Gaza’s inhabitants of greater than two million. By late March, of the 36 large-scale hospitals throughout Gaza, solely 10 had been “minimally purposeful,” in response to the World Well being Group.
Israeli officers say that medical facilities have been targets as a result of Hamas fighters embed themselves inside and beneath the services, and that it’s the solely approach to root out the armed group. Hamas and medical employees have denied this accusation. Assist teams, researchers and worldwide our bodies have more and more been calling Israel’s dismantling of Gaza’s medical capability “systematic.”
“If you happen to engineered the destruction of a well being care system, you’ll find yourself precisely the place we’re as we speak,” stated Ciarán Donnelly, a senior vp on the Worldwide Rescue Committee, an help group that has been working in Gaza.
Mr. Donnelly stated he had labored within the humanitarian help sector for 20 years and couldn’t consider another warfare by which a medical system had been so totally crushed so shortly.
Requested for remark, the Israeli army referred to earlier statements it has made about Hamas fighters’ embedding themselves in services. Proof examined by The New York Occasions suggests Hamas has used Al Shifa Hospital — which the Israeli army has raided — for canopy, saved weapons inside it and maintained a prolonged tunnel. The Israeli army has not introduced equally expansive proof about a lot of the different well being care facilities it has attacked.
Dr. Al-Reqeb’s previous facility, Nasser Hospital, was raided by Israeli troops in February. When he goes to his new job, at an Emirati-funded hospital — one of many few services in Gaza offering specialised gynecological and obstetric companies — he’s one in every of fewer than 10 docs treating 500 sufferers a day with a “extreme lack of provides, workers, drugs and tools,” he stated.
“I used to be very shocked after I realized the extent of injury the medical system is struggling,” Dr. Al-Reqeb, 33, stated in a phone interview. “It’s utterly destroyed.”
The devastation of the medical system has rippled all through Gaza. Most cancers sufferers have needed to halt chemotherapy. Individuals with kidney failure have misplaced entry to lifesaving dialysis. Pregnant girls have gone with out the monitoring that might assist determine life-threatening circumstances like pre-eclampsia.
“Generally I cry,” stated Dr. Zaki Zakzook, an oncologist who was as soon as one in every of Gaza’s pre-eminent most cancers docs and now lives in a tent together with his household in Khan Younis. “I’m watching my sufferers being executed, slowly and progressively.”
Dr. Zakzook has been capable of do little for his sufferers because the warfare pressured the closing of the most cancers hospital the place he labored, he stated. He now sees sufferers at a hospital within the south however now not offers them chemotherapy, fearing that doing so would weaken their immune methods at a time when the medical system is unable to deal with an infection, he stated. As a substitute, he affords palliative care, like painkillers.
“I’m making an attempt to do my greatest, others are attempting the identical, however what can we do?” he stated.
In February, Israeli forces stormed Nasser Hospital, a big facility in Khan Younis. They shelled the hospital’s orthopedic division and detained dozens of well being care employees, in response to Medical doctors With out Borders, an help group whose workers members witnessed the assault.
“The proof at our disposal factors to deliberate and repeated assaults by Israeli forces towards Nasser Hospital, its sufferers and its medical workers,” the group wrote. The Israeli army stated it had been looking for Hamas fighters and the our bodies of Israelis taken captive in the course of the Oct. 7 assault.
In March, the Israeli army raided Al Shifa Hospital for a second time, killing almost 200 folks it referred to as terrorists. Israeli troops left widespread devastation of their wake after prolonged gun battles with Palestinian militants in and across the advanced. It stated its troops had come beneath hearth from gunmen inside and round one of many hospital’s buildings. The Gazan authorities stated that 200 civilians had died within the raid. Neither assertion could possibly be independently verified.
After the raid, the hospital premises had been affected by our bodies and shallow graves, in response to the World Well being Group, which led a group this month to guage the hospital’s situation.
In an announcement after its go to, the W.H.O. stated the hospital was “an empty shell,” with no sufferers and most of its tools “unusable or decreased to ashes.”
“There’s rising proof {that a} purple cross or purple crescent really places a goal on you, fairly than the opposite approach round, and it’s simply an appalling degradation of human values,” stated Dr. Tim Goodacre, a surgeon who has been touring to Gaza for years to assist prepare Palestinian docs and volunteered at a hospital there in January.
Earlier than the warfare, Abdulaziz Saeed’s 63-year-old father was anticipating to obtain a kidney transplant in March. Mr. Saeed and his mom had each been authorised as potential donors. Then the warfare started. The physician who was to carry out the operation was killed, Mr. Saeed stated, and “all our plans have been canceled.”
His household now shares its residence with dozens of displaced folks within the metropolis of Deir al Balah, and his father, who beforehand wanted three dialysis classes every week for renal failure, is ready to obtain just one every week at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital.
“The largest situation is the dearth of medical workers,” Mr. Saeed stated. “There was once three specialised docs within the kidney division. Two of them had been killed, and the third is unreachable.”
Anas Saad, a 24-year-old nurse on the hospital, stated lots of his colleagues had stop after the repeated assaults on medical services.
“That is now not a protected place,” Mr. Saad stated. “I’m doing my greatest to assist folks survive. Nevertheless, it’s turning into extraordinarily dangerous, as hospitals will be stormed or bombed anytime.”
Dr. Tanya Haj Hassan, an American pediatric intensive-care physician, lately entered Gaza as a part of a group of international docs to volunteer on the hospital. She described “apocalyptic” scenes, together with a lady who, she stated, died after an Israeli bulldozer ran over a tent, crushing her, and a boy in a wheelchair whose total household had been killed however who believed that his dad and mom had been coming to get him as a result of “no person has the center to inform him.” Her account couldn’t be independently verified.
The whole lot of Gaza “simply feels prefer it was hit by a nuclear bomb,” she stated. “The truth is, they’ve taken out hospital at a time. ‘Hospital at a time’ — I can’t consider I’m even saying these phrases.”
Hwaida Saad contributed reporting from Beirut, Lebanon, and Johnatan Reiss from Tel Aviv.