Hospitals in Gaza report threats from Israeli planes
Gaza’s hospitals are facing dire conditions in the presence of dry fuel, and Palestinian attacks, according to a joint statement by the Red Crescent Society of Palestine
TEL AVIV, Israel — Hospitals in Gaza are facing dire conditions as much-needed fuel is running dry and staff try to operate amid overcrowding, disintegrating sanitation and threats from Israel.
For the last few weeks, the hospital has been receiving Israeli soldiers wounded from fighting in Gaza, as well as more than 200 northern residents who have been injured in rocket attacks from Lebanon.
The Red Crescent Society of Palestine said that an aircraft attacked the vicinity of the Al-Quds Hospital with two rockets.
The Rantissi Children’s Hospital and the Nasser Hospital Complex also have been damaged through direct and indirect airstrikes, according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza and the United Nations.
The Health Ministry in Gaza says that Israel has bombarded the territory, killing more than 10 thousand Palestinians and damaging overcrowded hospitals.
The constant bombardments are one thing, but these facilities are already struggling to meet the needs of their patients because of the lack of fuel, the WHO’s Jasarevic said.
“Doctors need to have electricity in a hospital to be able to perform surgical operations, and they need surgical material. Most hospitals don’t have that kind of things. Fuel is running really low. “They have to ration the last liters of fuel because they’re the last liters that are being used in hospitals.” “You have to run generators. You need a light of your own. You can’t use the flash flashlight of your mobile phone to perform surgeries.
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The military believes there are Hamas tunnels near these medical facilities.
It continued: “Even if there is a military facility operating under the hospital, this does not allow Israel to bomb the site. Such an attack would cause terrible harm to civilians and constitute a war crime, because of the provisions of international humanitarian law that Israel has repeatedly declared its commitment to uphold.
The Indonesian Hospital was built for humanitarian purposes and serves the medical needs of the Palestinians in Gaza, according to a statement from Indonesia’s Foreign Minister.
Where there used to be parking spots, there are now hospital beds, oxygen hookups, monitors and a respirator. Rambam, Israel’s largest trauma hospital, has 1,400 beds underground.
There are many familiar hospital scenes: a father caressing his newborn’s feet, a family crowded around the bedside of a sick loved one and a nurse drawing blood.
Tensions and fighting between Israel and Lebanon are taking place just 6 miles from the community hospital in Nahariya.
Dr. Masad Barhoum, the hospital director, says that they are underground with the patients as they prepare to take care of them even under fire. He is wearing a protective vest.
It took only a few hours to get the first patients underground when Hamas crossed from the Gaza Strip into southern Israel.
There is a ” limited spillover” of conflict between Israeli forces and Hezbollah in Lebanon, according to experts.
Dr. Sirhan works in the emergency department at the Galilee hospital. He says the threat is a real one. The war is still going on. It’s here.
Galilee’s wartime protections were used in Israel’s 2006 war with Lebanon. During that conflict, a missile from Lebanon hit the fourth floor of the hospital. Staff had already moved their medical care underground, so no one was injured in the attack.
Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, has said he’s ready to escalate the war further at any moment, depending on the course of Israel’s offensive in Gaza and its behavior toward Lebanon. “All scenarios are open on our Lebanese southern front,” he said on Friday in his first speech since the conflict began.
Training under the enemy: An Israeli hospital in the early stage of COVID-19 — a nightmare experience for an internal medicine nurse and the patient-patient relationship
“I’m not afraid myself,” says Dr. Vered Fleisher Sheffer, who runs the unit, “but the safety is so important to our parents and our most vulnerable babies.” When NPR visited late last month, there were babies being treated who were delivered as early as 24 weeks, their treatment just as seamless as if there wasn’t a war.
The trauma center and emergency room have heavy steel doors. Nearby there’s a shower ready in case Lebanon uses chemical weapons.
A few weeks ago, Sirhan was working when a call came in that an ambulance was on its way in with four people injured in a rocket attack near the border. Some of the patients, it turned out, were his relatives.
He says when the patients recognized him, they called his name, and his presence calmed them down. Their injuries weren’t critical and they have since recovered. But the experience doesn’t go away. “I don’t wish to treat my family again,” he says. That is a nightmare.
Though the hospital had previously used the underground garage during the COVID-19 pandemic, only a set number of staff had worked in that space, so for many, the practice exercise was the first time they’d been down there.
“I cannot lie and say it’s not a terrifying and frightening situation because it is,” says Alina Maister, an internal medicine nurse who is part of the training exercise and describes the last month in Israel as “one long day.”
She said she had questions with her colleagues as she toured the facility. “It’s hard to imagine how our jobs would look down here,” she says. “Where is everything? Where will people go? What is the plan?”
During the drill, dozens of staff members begin to practice triage and treatment of pretend-patients played by their coworkers and members of the Israeli military. Challenges become obvious: The acoustics make it difficult to hear the patients, and hospital sections — the ICU, the operating rooms — are in new locations, so the staff need to practice rolling the beds in the right direction.
They’ll figure out what to do in time according to Maister. We know how to deal with most situations. It’s one of the strengths of a nurse.
Source: Hospitals in Israel move underground to keep working amid rockets from Lebanon
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At Rambam, the pediatric dialysis is already fully functional in the garage. That section of parking spots is buzzing with the hum of nurses, children playing video games and a father listening to a pop song with his daughter.
Tal Romano’s 4-year-old son Hadar is getting dialysis treatment. “It makes me feel more comfortable,” Romano says, sitting next to his son. It feels very safe here.
While Romano speaks to NPR, a nurse draws a flower in pen on Hadar’s leg to make him laugh. Hadar missed the colorful kid friendly decor of the upstairs unit and that’s the only critique he had on getting treatment underground.
Hospitals in Gaza are facing crisis amid fuel shortage, sanitation and threats from Israel, a joint statement by the Red Crescent Society of Palestine and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said. Over 100 people have been killed and nearly 2,000 have been injured in the conflict, Gaza’s Health Ministry said.