They tell of the lack of antiseptics and patients screaming in pain, the “avoidable deaths”. Returning after several weeks to the European hospital in Gaza, two French doctors described surgeries carried out in “terrible” conditions in the war-ravaged Palestinian enclave.
“There are no longer any means to ensure asepsis [prévention des maladies infectieuses] of a hospital service”, summarized Monday Doctor Khaled Benboutrif, Toulouse emergency doctor, who went to the south of the Gaza Strip between January 22 and February 6 with the Palmed medical association, specializing in aid to the Palestinians.
“We couldn’t find anywhere to treat, there was no stretcher […]we were forced to treat seriously injured people on the ground,” added the sixty-year-old during a press conference in Marseille.
His colleague Pascal André, a trained infectious disease specialist, noted between February 8 and 22 that “a lot of patients have serious post-operative infections”, because the theater “is not sufficiently clean” in the absence of antiseptic.
“We are in a situation which is unspeakable, which is unjustifiable,” said the French doctor.
The war in the Gaza Strip was sparked by an October 7 attack by the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas in southern Israel that resulted in the deaths of at least 1,160 people, most of them civilians, according to a AFP count based on official Israeli data.
The Israeli military operation launched in retaliation left more than 31,700 dead in the Gaza Strip, mostly civilians, according to the Hamas Ministry of Health.
“The surgery is carried out in conditions which are terrible because people cannot clean themselves properly beforehand,” detailed Pascal André.
For Doctor Benboutrif, the conflict has lasted so long that there is “no longer any question” for the caregivers at the European hospital “of being able to maintain the slightest organization”.
Thus, underlines the emergency physician, “the laboratory was completely faulty […] therefore the slightest examination necessary to diagnose, for follow-up, was not possible.”
“Avoidable” deaths
One of the difficulties is the fact that many people displaced by the fighting have found refuge “in the corridors, in the waiting rooms, in the stairwells” and even in “certain elevators, everywhere” in the hospital, assured Khaled Benboutrif.
Despite everything, “patient care must continue in total disorder,” he added.
“I saw patients in intensive care who had tubes in their mouths, who were ventilated and who had their eyes open because there was not enough hypnotic,” the doctor recounted with emotion. André, explaining that many humanitarian aid trucks remain blocked at the border with Egypt.
Israel controls the entry of land aid into Gaza, which remains very insufficient given the immense needs of the 2.4 million inhabitants, the vast majority of whom are threatened with famine according to the UN.
The doctor, based in Rodez in Aveyron, assured that some patients were “screaming because there was no anesthetic” and explained that the lack of medication affected those with long illnesses.
In February, he saw a young mother die “because she did not have access to treatment for her diabetes”. These are “deaths which are completely avoidable, and which we do not talk about, which are not counted”, he lamented.
In addition to the victims of bombings, Doctor Benboutrif explained that he had received “many sniper victims” in the emergency room.
“It was clear that children were being shot. It was well planned, it was well calculated,” said the doctor, referring to the case of an 11-year-old girl who became quadriplegic after being hit by a bullet in the neck.
The two doctors regretted the lack of attention given to their testimony since their return to Europe. “I am suffering from this silence,” concluded Doctor André.