“Dead on Arrival”: Doctors Back from Gaza Describe Horrific Hospital Scenes, Decimated Health System

this news is funded by viewers like you please support our work at democracynow.org this is democracy Now democracynow.org The War and Peace report I'm Amy Goodman nearly seven months of constant bombardment Siege and obstruction of a deliveries have annihilated the Health Care system in Gaza last week the Palestinian Health Ministry said around 600,000 Palestinians in the northern glassa strip no longer have access to any kind of Health Care the World Health Organization has said said that Israel is quote systematically dismantling the health system and Gaza save the children's reported Israel's attacks on the healthc care sector and Gaza at the rate of 73 attacks per month are higher than in any other recent conflict in the world only 11 hospitals out of 36 hospitals in Gaza are partially functioning in April gaza's largest hospital alif and Gaza City in the north was completely destroyed following a two-e Siege by Israeli forces then gaza's second largest hospital NASA hospital was also destroyed following another brutal Siege by Israeli forces in clunis after their withdrawals Palestinians found hundreds of bodies buried in Mass Graves at both Hospitals now the largest hospital remaining partially operating in Gaza as the European Hospital in kanun like so many other hospitals it's also Sheltering thousands of displaced Palestinians we're joined Now by two doctors just back from Gaza who volunteered at the European Hospital Hospital Dr isma me is an anesthesiologist and chair of the nonprofit imman medical relief which focuses on disaster relief Dr Mar has participated in over 35 Medical missions globally as Beena five times dating back to the 2008 2009 War he's joining us from Hornell New York and joining us from Charlotte North Carolina is Dr azim elahi a pulmonary and critical care physician who is part of the team of doctors volunteering at European hospital with medical relief Dr he's participated in several humanitarian medical mission trips to various parts of the world was previously in Gaza in 2019 we welcome you both to democracy Now Dr May let's begin with you describe what you saw first of all thank you Amy for having both of us and um describe what I saw a very common question um immediately when we entered in the and in the morning went to go to work uh the first site was all the UTS the children through from children through the adults um seeing the number of UTS W UTS with 30,000 people living outside or inside that hospital was our first sights the first thing that we saw and um you know my experience in Gaza this was my fifth time there I had never seen something like this um including my visits to Syria Somalia Sudan and Yemen in the past you know conflict zones areas under tense uh you know circumstances I've never seen this number of amputees destruction in people just U seeking Refuge it it was uh it was an experience like no other if you can tell us about a few cases and also talk about patients coming from other hospitals and what you heard about NASA and um shifa this horrifying report we got in the last week of mass Graves discovered at both major hospitals yeah you know you make a lot of friends uh as you travel back and forth to Gaza I mean people that I was deathly sick and worried about if they were still alive and when I was at European Gaza Hospital uh I ran into some of my friends I saw them there they had shifted down from the north and they shared some of the horrors of shiffa hospital they shared that they were there when um forces came in and in some of the stories and and what took place um and they shared with me the name you know people that were friends of ours have passed away like Dr medat the plastic surgeon who was killed and Dr Ahmed a young plastic surgeon and his mother were killed at chiffon their bodies were found there they shared those stories with us and we we paused and we grieved and then we got back to work um patients you know uh Yasin 11y old boy uh was a double amputee he's 11 years old uh you know I have children those watching have children grandchildren nieces and nephews imagine your 11-year-old family memb losing both his legs and and now in Gaza there were only two prosthetic centers that that would help these you know amputees throughout the Gaza Strip and those no longer exist and as you mentioned earlier a systematic dismantling of Health Care um you know we saw it we occurred it um every night uh we would hear the bombings the strikes the drones the uh the artillery and like clockwork myself and Dr azim and my other two colleagues Dr Shazia and Dr shark would know it's time for us to get to the emergency department and we would work long hours into the early morning hours helping the local doctors at European Gaza Hospital try to save lives as mass casualties would come in some would be dead on arrival and some would die while we were working on them and then others would' be able to save and you know as we started the show earlier about the recent bombing uh strike in Rafa it brought back uh Vivid memories like and I could recall myself and aim in that emergency department going through what takes place and uh to follow up yes European God hospital is the only tertiary only high level Hospital remaining it it is not a massively huge Hospital like shifa was or nasar was and now when strikes take place in other places there is no place that can stabilize or take care of such um Mass casualties besides European Gaza hospital so from Rafa they're brought to European Gaza Hospital which is probably about 10 5 to 8 kilometers probably um and then of receive care so you know this is life in Gaza as a healthcare worker right now trying to deal with all this this is a short video your team filmed of some of the children and people taking shelter inside European Hospital many of them have set up makeshift tents in the hallways another day in ehum how are you [Music] these are people they're living in the hospitals try another 20,000 at least outside hey how are you so they've lost everything they live in the hospitals they're not patients um they make makeshifts on the side there's people up on the stairs like this um this is life Ina that's inside um European Hospital Dr azim alahi if you can describe the atmosphere not only the patients but the people taking refuge and then what people are dying of you've got the uh air strikes directly uh but then you also have disease uh and you have this imminent famine talk about that Dr Ali Amy thank you for inviting us to share our experience um I was listening to that clip in my ears and um immediately a smile came on my face just because it took me back to to those moments when we'd walk through the hallways um it's as equally happy as it is sad because um these are displaced people who have arrived to the hospital for shelter for electricity for food with broken families these when you sit down and actually interact with the people that you encounter in these corridors you realize very quickly that the families are extended families and they've been brought together because of uh injured family members or family members who have passed away as a result of the war the corridors are lined just like you see in that video in every nook and cranny every staircase every space in the hospital where you're taking care of patients where the radiologist is reviewing scans is occupied by displaced persons um the situation there is dire because it does in fact interrupt medical care when you have this cohabitation of sterility and medical treatment with just life and it's it's a truly amazing parody to see in real life because you can hear in the video the amazement and the joy and the laughter um that you can hear from the children's voices but when they're tucked in behind those curtains I can assure you that their life is very different than what their faces show and the issue of disease and people weakened by hunger in addition to the direct um the morbidity from direct strikes the type of patients we would admit to the Intensive Care Unit were often times blast injury patients uh I'm an adult critical care physician and when I joined the European Gaza Hospital ICU I realized majority of our patients were actually pediatric patients the more than 50% of the patients in that ICU were under the age of 16 mainly because they were involved that when when these bombings and the bombardment occurs they're typically in the evening when the family units are sleeping together and and the patients that would make it to the hospital are the lucky ones and just as Dr meaher pointed out many of them would arrive dead and the few that were able to survive would end up in the ICU the injuries we would see were trauma related so they had brain injuries um subarachnoid hemorrhages subdural hemorrhages traumatic brain injuries they required mechanical ventilation because they weren't able to breathe on their own a lot of infections uh especially in the post-operative setting when your nutrition is affected and and this is true in the US in the UK as it is anywhere else in the world every surgeon wants their patient to be as nourished as possible we know with clear-cut data that patients who are malnourished who are um uh are higher risk of developing post-operative infections post-operative morbidity I want to put the same question to Dr Ismael May uh the question of the um injuries people are suffering either from direct air strike or from disease yeah I mean um aim was just remarkable part member of our team and and was like he shared in the ICU um my role was you know I was in the operting room as an anesthesiologist but with our experience and our team's experience we man the ER quite often and what I want to really share with the viewers in the world and my message is is it's very sexy to look at the bombings the the strikes you know and I I share that I'm being sarcastic but you know that's the world focuses on on traumatic stuff what we forget is a grandmother who died from urinary tract infection I had to do CPR on her and code her in the emergency department and then look at her son and say she died he's like she just had an infection because as you shared earlier excuse me there's no Healthcare System intact any longer uh EG is bursting at the seams it's not bursting it is bursted and as you and I when we get sick or your your your child or grandchild or niece or nephew or or Aunt or Uncle you take them to the doctor Gaza had a Health Care system in place not always the most robust due to the uh the Embargo but you could still go and see your doctor get your glucose medicine there was a gentleman a mid-age gentleman that we had to do an amputation on because he had been Barefoot for months got an infection learned that he never he did not take his glucophage or met form and those of you who are diabetics or or know those medicines they're for man sugar he got gas garine of his foot came in so late that we thought he was going to die that night opera him on early in the morning he died six hours later what about the 20-year-old patient I believe her name was Amna who had fulminant liver failure from hepatitis A not even you know Hepatitis B and C are are are very severe forms of hepatitis hepatitis A is from unhygienic water and food and she was dying in front of us in that emergency room um the the mother who developed a blood clot in her leg because she's been immobile living in a tent and then she had a pulmonary embolism or a clot to her lung every day there were people we were declaring dead in that emergency room who were dying of simple basic things that in Gaza could be treated I have seen them treated in Gaza before in my experience and there's no voice for those people yes people are dying from the strikes every day but the world is failing to see the implications of those who are the unaccounted for as we continue with the two doctors just back from Gaza volunteering at European Hospital Dr isma me anesthesiologist chair of the nonprofit imman medical relief which focuses on disaster relief Dr Mar's participated in over 35 Medical missions globally he been to Kaza five times dating back to 2008 and9 and Dr aim malahi is with us from Charlotte North Carolina pulmonary critical care physician um who is just back also from European Hospital Dr May you've been in dozens of conflict zones around the world how does Gaza compare there's no comparison um you know you you say uh you've seen in um you know in a long career that uh when you've seen everything you you know you know your career is complete and I thought at one point that you know I've seen everything and when I walked into Gaza I'm not even close now I can compared to Gaza 2008 2009 2022 2023 um you know I had the opportunity to go to uh deah it's a little bit north of khun and I had to drive through khun to deliver uh supplies and medications that uh we had for different hospitals and as far as I could see it looked like Armageddon there was not a single building single structure single gas station single Hospital single School single University that remained standing and then um the the Despair and the and the the the that you see around you at European Gaza hospital um I can't do justice to describe it I just maybe aim can or someone else can I just it's just you can't describe it I want to go to one of the people you met at European hospitals you were just describing raat badwan describing what he and his relatives were uh sleeping targeted by an Israeli strike his son survived but severely injured my brother and his wife and his all children two daughters and one son are killed also my sister's son are killed by them we don't do anything our Gaza and all the health sector need your support there is many injury and there's a shortage in medical supplies we also need we all need your help that's ra one Dr mayor if you can also talk about how Gaza has changed in the many times that you have been there back to 20089 yeah I think people failed to forget everyone thinks everything started October 7th this has gone back to to you know 70 uh 8 75 76 years you know since 1948 and then Gaza specifically down back to the early 2000s with the Embargo um the the healthare system has been been always in a noose and that noose tightens at times uh when there's conflict um or it loosens up but it remains around the the neck of the Health Care system and right now that noose has completely just uh you know has um hung the Healthcare System I mean people say partially people use words as it's it's semi functional or remaining hospitals yes there's there's structures and there's amazing colleagues and brothers and sisters from Healthcare that are doing amazing job but a Functional Health Care system to save lives is is has been extinguished it's uh you know I'm I Can't Describe what the situation is there and that that uh that gentleman Mr rwan he's a pharmacist and I remember that night vividly and I'm sure aim does as well it was multip mult multiple casualties came in children with depressed color fractures mothers um you know some of them were his family members others were just others his neighbors and um luckily our team was there from mman and heel Palestine we partnered with heel Palestine in this Mission and we were able to work along and help save some lives that night but what what hurts me is is that every day this is happening and every day there are there are innocent people losing their lives Dr Alia I wanted to to get your final comment and your message as you come back to your practice in Charlotte North Carolina um how this has changed you and what you'll be telling the medical community here I will say um from 2019s experience and our current experience just now what you'll realize from the people in Gaza is they just want the world to know and understand what they're going through you heard it in this gentleman's voice that he's he's just expressing a plea to the world to provide help to the people of guza see what's happening there and when I come back to the comfort of my home and the comfort of my family and the comfort of a modern Health Care System it is really difficult to understand what's happening I think we just have to open our eyes share with the world what's happening there and open our hearts for them Dr aim malahi and Dr isma me back from volunteering G's European hospital with the ammana medical relief team that does it for our show a happy early birthday to Dennis moan democracy Now produced with a remarkable team I thank them all I'm Amy Goodman thanks so much for joining us democracy Now is funded by viewers like you please give today at democracynow.org

Channel: Democracy Now!

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Id: SRgrrYXH4xQ

Length: 19min 29sec (1169 seconds)

Published: Fri May 03 2024