Hospitals in Gaza and Israel are facing a crisis in providing medical care to patients as ongoing rocket attacks from Hamas and the Israeli military contribute to the soaring death toll among civilians caught in the crossfire.
Four Palestinian paramedics were killed in Gaza on Wednesday due to Israeli strikes that have killed roughly 1,000 in the territory, according to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC).
And doctors in neighbouring Israeli towns have detailed the influx of patients after Hamas stormed through the border fence Saturday and gunned down more than 1,000 Israelis in their homes, on the streets, and at an outdoor music festival.
“Since Saturday morning we have received an injured amount (of people) that is incredible,” explained Dr. Ron Nobel, director of emergency and disaster management at the Barzilai Medical Center in Ashkelon, Israel.
“We are used to fighting, we are used to injured people that come into the hospital, but not in these numbers.”
The hospital located in Ashkelon, which is 20 kilometres from Gaza, was also hit with rockets during Saturday’s attack but no one was reported injured.
Staff have been working around the clock to try and treat the influx of patients, something Nobel said he has never seen in his career.
“A mass casualty event with 50 injured is considered to be a huge one. In the first few hours of Saturday, we received more than 200 injured people, that is an incredible number,” he told Global News.
“But the hospital is very well organized and we are very well trained because we get the training every few months. Unfortunately many arrived dead and others died within a few hours upon arrival.”
Nobel recounted a range of injuries among children, women, and men, including bullet wounds, injuries from rocket explosions and burns resulting from Hamas militants setting fire to homes.
On Saturday, Hamas fighters launched a surprise attack on Israel and killed hundreds of Israelis in their homes. Nobel’s village was one of the communities targeted in the attack.
Nobel said he was trapped inside his home on Saturday after Hamas gunman took control of his town.
“They tried to break into my house, they didn’t succeed, they moved to other houses. Very frightening. I have never been so frightened my entire life,” he said.
The conflict, which has already claimed at least 2,000 lives, is expected to escalate — and compound the difficulties of people living in Gaza, where basic necessities and electricity were already in short supply.
Gaza running out of life-saving medicine
Across the border from Nobel’s town, hospitals in Gaza are struggling to treat thousands of injured civilians.
A spokesperson for Gaza’s Ministry of Health told Global News health workers are facing critical shortages of basic medical supplies and fuel and begged the international community to open a humanitarian corridor for life-saving supplies.
James Denslow, the head of the conflict and humanitarian policy and advocacy team at Save the Children U.K., said the conflict is a desperately difficult time for tens of thousands of children on both sides of the border.
“We’re calling for an urgent humanitarian pause to allow emergency aid to be delivered to children in Gaza and allow children affected by the violence, the freedom to move, to find safety because there is very little in the way of safety in Gaza,” he told Global News. “And obviously large areas of Israel are affected by indiscriminate rocket fire, too.”
Israel has stopped the entry of food, water, fuel and medicine into Gaza — a 40-kilometre-long strip of land wedged among Israel, Egypt and the Mediterranean Sea that is home to 2.3 million Palestinians.
The territory’s only power plant ran out of fuel Wednesday.
Prior to the recent conflict, Denslow said Gaza’s health sector had already been severely strained due to years of prolonged conflict.
In the early 2010s Denslow worked with Medical Aid for Palestinians, a U.K.-based health agency that has offices in Gaza. He witnessed firsthand just how dire the medical crisis is during a time of crisis.
“One of the issues I was really struck by spending time in hospitals in Gaza is how medical equipment has to be replaced because of rusting because they don’t have the right water to clean equipment,” he said.
“When I was in one of the main hospitals in Gaza City, I was conscious that the entire hospital had run out of soap. And so, kind of basic kind of hygiene control was a challenge alone, and also long-standing issues on the numbers of medical medicines that are at zero stock.“
Many Gaza hospitals are also reliant on battery supplies, because of inconsistent electricity, he explained.
He worries because water, electricity and fuel have been cut off to hospitals in the territory, life-saving medicines will be depleted, and blood banks will run dry.
“We will see far higher rates of mortality and the sort of quality of care will decline,” he said.
The World Health Organization said Tuesday that supplies it had pre-positioned for seven hospitals in Gaza have already run out amid the flood of wounded.
Medecins Sans Frontieres Canada (MSF), whose team members are currently in Gaza, said the “situation is catastrophic,” in a statement posted Tuesday. Hospitals are overcrowded and there is a shortage of medical supplies, antibiotics and fuel for generators.
MSF said it has sent surgical teams to two hospitals to help treat the wounded and also set up a clinic in downtown Gaza for people with other injuries.
“The declaration of war must not, under any circumstances, lead to collective punishment of the population of Gaza. Cutting off water, electricity and fuel supplies is unacceptable, as it punishes the entire population and deprives them of their basic needs,” the MSF statement read.
Dr. Tarek Loubani, an Ontario-based doctor, said he has previously worked in Gaza and described the situation on the ground as a desperate medical situation.
“When I worked in the emergency during the war in Gaza, I can tell you that all my colleagues have been able to as much as possible, compartmentalize, sometimes even treating their own family members when they arrive injured or dead,” he said.
He said many of his colleagues are still in Gaza, and it’s “very difficult to watch this from afar.”
“The attacks now appear completely indiscriminate,” he said.
“It doesn’t seem as though there’s any specific targeting and it does seem at the moment as though the the casualties are more or less random within Gaza.”
— with files from Global News’ Jeff Semple and the Associated Press