Testimonies Returning from Gaza, doctors from the International Rescue Committee tell about the hygiene and safety conditions in hospitals

In the Middle East, the escalation between Israel and Iran is putting the situation in Gaza on the back burner. However, the Israeli army claims to be preparing “the next stages of the war” in the Gaza Strip. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu explained in a video, broadcast on Sunday April 21, that ““military and political pressure will increase on Hamas in the coming days.”

This is what worries the humanitarians on site. Doctors from the International Rescue Committee participated in a press conference on Monday, April 22, to recount what they saw in the Gaza Strip and the deplorable conditions in which they try to work.

Doctors Qureshi and Dawas have just returned from Al-Aqsa Hospital, located in the central Gaza Strip. They describe completely destroyed cities and an overloaded hospital with very little equipment to work with. Doctor Qureshi is a vascular surgeon: “Basic equipment needed for any operation, such as suction tubes or scalpels, are not available. Nor are sheets that are supposed to guarantee the sterilization of operations.”

“This is the result of the war”

The same dismay every time. Like when a young man shows up with his leg torn by shrapnel: “When he came into the emergency room with this horrible wound, the cleanest thing I could find to place on what was left of his leg, which wasn’t yet full of blood, was a diaper. babies.”

Doctor Dawas is fed up with having to be satisfied with these conditions: “There is a minimum level of safety and hygiene in which you can expect to work as a doctor. I have been to Gaza several times and it was not like that. The idea that the conditions were that bad before is false: it is the result of the war.” Both are ready to leave but denounce the aid which does not enter Gaza. Help they desperately need to heal.