British Doctor on Witnessing Israel's Destruction of Gaza Hospitals, Horrific Injuries to Children

this is democracy Now democracynow.org The War and Peace report I'm Amy Goodman Israeli forces are pushing further into Southern Gaza with air strikes and ground troops attacking areas that Israel had previously told Palestinians to flee to as safe zones over the past few days Israel's bombed areas close to Nasa Hospital the largest remaining semi functioning health facility in Gaza located in the southern city of kanun Gaza only only has 16 partially functioning Health Facilities remaining before Israel's assault Gaza had 36 hospitals the hospitals that are still working are operating far beyond their capacity have been turned into makeshift refug G camps to house the displaced and may shift morgs with health officials describing the situation as catastrophic the health Ministry estimates that over 60,000 people people have been wounded in Gaza with hundreds more casualties every day the casualty count at this point is nearing 25,000 more than 10,000 of them children for more we're joined by Dr James Smith an emergency medical doctor who just returned from Gaza earlier this month where he worked alongside Palestinian healthcare workers to treat patients at aloa hospital located in der abala in the middle of the Gaza Strip Dr James was in Gaza with the organization Medical Aid for Palestinians he's joining us now from London Dr James welcome to democracy Now describe what you saw what you confronted the work you were doing what's happening at alaa hospital hi Amy so yes as as you say I was working with uh a team or there were 10 of us uh myself I was with uh the organization Medical Aid for Palestinians we were accompanied by colleagues from the International Rescue committee and very importantly we were it's it's important to really reiterate that we were working uh with with with our Palestinian uh colleagues so doctors nurses other healthc Care Professionals at Alaska at sorry at uh Al sorry at uh alaxa Hospital uh alaxa is is a hospital based in the middle area of Gaza so south of of Gaza City and north of canun uh myself I was working in the emergency room so we would uh position ourselves in the ER every morning um and really at that point wait to see um what what the day would bring every single day uh without exception there were multiple mass casualty incidents at the hospital uh so that's several patients presenting at a time uh with traumatic injuries of of varying severity those patients would require stabilization and then often uh transfer through to the operating room for surgical intervention some patients would require paliative care if we were able to provide some form of of paliative care um and with in addition to to many many trauma patients and by many I mean several hundred over the time that we were working at Alexa um we were also treating patients presenting with complex medical problems uh so people that had suffered uh heart attacks for example uh had suffered from Strokes um people whose uh hypertension or diabetes uh management had had uh had been negatively impacted uh usually through a lack of access to their their usual medication uh or because they hadn't been able to see their their usual doctor for several months um and then furthermore we were also seeing an even greater number of people with effective primary healthare level problems so the the entirety of the primary health care or or Community Care system in Gaza has has completely collapsed in fact the entire Health Care System uh the Ministry of Health has has has already announced several months ago has has completely collapsed but that meant that anyone presenting with uh so-call well more minor complaints coughs colds diarrheal illnesses they were all also presenting to the emergency room to be seen by the the doctors and nurses uh there can you talk about treating children Dr James sure so as you've mentioned a significant proportion of the people that have been killed since the start of this escalation are children we certainly saw every mass casualty incident um in the emergency room there were uh several children also present uh I remember very vividly some of the most traumatic in injuries uh inflicted upon people were inflicted upon children uh and they would include uh open chest wounds open abdominal wounds traumatic amputations um severe full thickness Burns to a substantial proportion of the body area um really some of the most horrific traumatic injuries that that I have ever seen we're actually showing images for a TV audience of uh aloa hospital and of the children um and the adults uh who have been wounded there you know it's really important to point out you if you're talking about a hospital in normal times uh that has uh repeatedly been attacked it would and that's severely compromised in its functioning but we're talking about this constant bombardment that where you have people coming in who have been um severely wounded um you have people taking Refuge there and is it both like a refugee camp and a morg so there were several thousand people that had sought supposed Sanctuary within the hospital compound itself and we've seen this in in several other hospitals uh across the Gaza Strip uh there were reports for example of thousands of people Sheltering in the alifa uh compound before before that was surrounded and and raided by the the Israeli occupation forces uh the same was the case at at alaxa so there were people um staying in makeshift tents in in in and around the hospital buildings just up the the the Main Street adjacent to the hospital um a sort of a another IDP Camp internally displaced persons Camp had sort of formed uh very organic Ally on um open land um as the Israeli Ground Forces moved closer to the hospital and as the bombardment the artillery and and air bombardment intensified many of those many thousands of those displaced people have displaced further south um towards Rafa uh and that also includes patients who were in the hospital at the time that that we were working there many of them um have also fled along with um many of the staff as well I wanted to um go to a clip and it's really important to play these clips uh right now Gaza has experienced the longest Communications Blackout um of this uh Israeli attack for the last three months I think it's something like seven days so it's really hard to get information inside uh this intense Israeli bombardment in the vicinity of Nasser Hospital the main hospital hospital and conun the largest remaining semi functioning health facility in Gaza and tanks and armored vehicles are on the main road leading to the area on Wednesday democracy Now reached Dr Ahmed mcrai who works in Nasser hospital he described the situation on the ground and the difficulty in getting out any messages uh this is what he had to say thank you sister you're asking about us thank you for letting me speak out here we don't have Internet at all I managed to get a very weak signal I can't upload any of these videos yeah 90% of people who who are already evacuated at the hospital they evacuated from the hospital 90% of medical personnel evacuated from the hospital and this is my little daughter actually she got H the trauma yesterday you know hundreds of these evacuated people at the corridor somebody pushed her and she filled on her head head now I'm taking care about my this little girl she needs medicine she's not well so I stay at the hospital now but I want to evacuate situation is catastrophic sister really I'm very tired I'm very tired that's Dr Ahmed mcrai and the image we've been showing as he spoke was Dr mcrai holding his own wounded daughter um I'm wondering Dr James if you can talk about the significance the medical significance of a complete almost complete telecommunications blackout in terms of ambulances being reached people being able to communicate to get help absolutely I mean this this is It's a catastrophic development as as you've mentioned Amy this I think is the seventh time that the Israelis have suspended uh access to to telecommunications across almost the entirety of the Gaza a strip um this is now day six or seven um of of of a complete sort of telecommunications blackout it makes it almost impossible to to do anything so people for in the first instance people can't reach their families their loved ones they can't communicate with with colleagues they can't reassure family that they're okay or indeed um that relatives and friends can't inform um family members and so on when somebody has been killed or or injured um there have been occasions where the emergency number um has has not been in use um so as as you say it's been difficult to to call um ambulances or mobilize ambulances to places where there has been an air or or artillery strike uh it makes it very difficult for health and humanitarian workers to to do to do their essential work so they can't coordinate with each other we only have 10 seconds what message do you have for the world just having come out of Gaza 10 seconds the violence needs to end immediately Dr James Smith emergency medical doctor just back from Gaza where he worked to treat patients at eloa hospital that does it for our show democracy now has job openings check democracynow.org

Channel: Democracy Now!

Views: 158,870

Keywords: Democracy Now, Amy Goodman, News, Politics, democracynow, Independent Media, Breaking News, World News

Id: mXbnghe5W9g

Length: 11min 33sec (693 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 19 2024