She’s so sad to see what we can do in the U.S., and she is so excited to help people in need of a ceasefire
She said that a ceasefire would allow them to finish their mission, give other people help, and allow for their safe return home.
Everyone was hoping for a cease-fire. (Israel says it is rejecting a sustained ceasefire because it needs to eliminate Hamas’s military capability.)
“So you see how sad this is?” he said in the interview. “I mean this patient is only like about 60 years old. We will not do this in the U.S. as you know, but this time of war and lack of resources that we are forced to do this.”
At the Rafah hospital on Thursday, Monica Johnston, a burn nurse from Portland, Ore., was back at the ICU, only partially recovered from a gastrointestinal infection that left her dehydrated, dizzy and nauseous.
“Every day that that crossing is not available and usable for humanitarian assistance, there’s going to be more suffering, and that’s of deep concern to us,” he told reporters. “And so once again, we urge the Israelis to open up that crossing to humanitarian assistance immediately, that aid is desperately needed.”
The only crossing that can handle a lot of fuel trucks is the Rafah crossing, so the U.S. wants it opened immediately.
The Fuel Deficit in the Gaza Relief Operations: Report of the Gaza Strip’s Aid Operations to the Bridging Points of Collapse
The head of the U.N.’s relief operations, Andrea De Domenico, told the French press agency AFP that amount of fuel was needed each day to maintain operations.
The Israeli military on Friday in an apparent response to the concerns said it had transferred more than 52,000 gallons of fuel to be made available to international organizations in Gaza through Kerem Shalom crossing into southern Gaza.
“The whole aid operation runs on fuel,” said Jeremy Konyndyk, president of Refugees International. “That means water can’t be pumped, lights can’t be kept on in hospitals, vehicles cannot distribute aid. So if the fuel is cut off the aid operation collapses, and it collapses quickly.”
According to United Nations data, the number of aid trucks entering Gaza hit a peak last week since October: A total of 1,674 aid trucks entered Gaza through the Kerem Shalom and Rafah crossings, the main entry points of aid into the enclave. Aid trucks have not been allowed into the Gaza Strip from either of the entry points since Sunday.
International aid and medical workers who were either in Rafah or who had recently left, warned at a press briefing this week that the damage to Gaza infrastructure, lack of clean water, ongoing attacks and increasing starvation had brought humanitarian operations to the brink of collapse.
A doctor’s experience with Israel shutting the border: a painful story of two doctors in Rafah hospital, Gaza, and the conflict between medicine and humanity
“They tried to fix the hole in the heart, but they couldn’t because of the bomb,” explains Dr. Usman Shah from California. A video was made by the vice president of the Syrian American Medical Society, who is overseeing the intensive care unit.
The two are members of a team of U.S. and U.S.-trained doctors who arrived in Rafah 10 days ago as part of a medical mission organized by the Palestinian American Medical Association. With Israel closing the main border crossing, they are unable to leave.
Shah, dressed in blue scrubs, relates in an even voice how the jaw of one of the patients crumbled under his hand when he touched him. In the only visible sign of distress, he massages his temple and briefly closes his eyes as he tells the story.
Many local physicians and nurses have had to leave their families in order to come to work because the border has been closed for over a month.
I have to prioritize patient lives here. I know that when I say ‘prioritizing patient lives’. but I never used it before until I came here,” he said in an interview with NPR by video call from Rafah.
An 18-year-old woman with a skull injury so severe that brain material was visible, is one of the most difficult cases that Ghanem pointed out in a video sent to NPR from the hospital. He claimed that they did not have enough drugs to keep her inaudible.
Source: U.S. medical volunteers in Rafah hospital say they’ve never seen a worse health crisis
Gaza’s medical crisis: Dr. Nick Maynard and international aid have failed to address the U.S.’s $1 million humanitarian crisis
He said they stopped treatment for the woman after two days because she needed more oxygen.
Ghanem didn’t want the hospital identified for security reasons, he estimated that two to three patients died in the intensive care unit each day because of lack of supplies or equipment.
Part of the problem is that items critical for hospitals are banned by Israel which says they can be used by Hamas for military purposes. The water disinfection materials are on the list of items it considers dual-use.
Some items that have been banned are not covered by the list. Save the Children has said it has had shipments rejected by Israel because they contained sleeping bags with zippers. Some of the items that have been reported to have been rejected by organizations include fishing rods and plastic sheets for tents.
After the killing of seven workers in Gaza from the U.S.-based World Central Kitchen last month, Israel, under U.S. pressure, pledged to allow in more aid, improve coordination and to safeguard humanitarian staff.
A statement issued this week by seven major international aid organizations, including Save the Children and Care, said those pledges have not been fulfilled.
“humanitarian actors don’t see significant improvement in addressing dire challenges to prevent life saving aid for Gaza’s 2.3 million residents,” the statement read.
Israel ordered people to leave sectors of Rafah because of the amount of people there. But for many there is no where to go.
Families were setting up tents on sidewalks and in graveyards, according to a Gaza-based communications officer. There is no clean water and no toiletry on the beach where she says others have moved.
Oxford professor Dr. Nick Maynard, a surgeon from England who traveled to Gaza three times on medical missions since the start of the war, said most of his time over Christmas was spent operating on major explosive injuries to the chest and abdomen. He said on his last trip this month that complications due to malnutrition in trauma cases had increased.
He said that he operated on many patients in the last two weeks who had terrible consequences from abdominal surgery, and particularly those with the abdominal wall breaking down. Their stomachs end up hanging outside.
Maynard said two of his patients, girls age 16 and 18, had survivable injuries but died last week as a direct result of malnutrition contributing to their deaths.
Med Global, a US-based medical aid organization, is currently at a tipping point. He said before the war, Palestinian children were only getting about 80% of the calories they needed. Now, seven months into the war, the effects of consistent deprivation are showing.
“It’s at that time that the immunological system begins to break down,” he said. “It’s at that time where infections and complications of malnutrition will start.”
Is Israel threatening to kill Rafah? — The Times’ Markovian reporter’s comment on the attack on the rebellious regime
Several Western and Israeli officials claim that Egypt is putting pressure on Israel to control its invasion of Rafah by resisting the shipment of aid trucks to Kerem Shalom.
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