Only gauze and iodine for injured patients at Gaza field hospital

Research Frontiers

22/12/2023 16:18

GAZA, Dec 22 (Reuters) - All Palestinian surgeon Bashir
al-Hourani has to work with in the central Gaza school where he
helps run a field clinic amid Israel's pounding offensive is
gauze and disinfectant as he treats walking wounded turned away
from overstretched hospitals.
    "We don't have anything else," he said, showing a bottle of
iodine he was using to wash the long operating scar running down
the torso and stomach of an injured man. 
    "This patient should be in hospital but because of
overcrowding he was transferred to the field hospital," he said.
    "We have dozens like this patient. We have children it's
hard to treat. We change their dressings one day and the next we
find infection because there is no sterilisation, there are no
specialised places. There are no bin bags," he said. 
    Al-Sayedah Khadija School is located in Deir al-Balah, in
the centre of the tiny crowded Palestinian enclave that Israeli 
forces have been besieging, bombarding and in recent weeks
invading in response to a deadly Hamas attack on Oct. 7.
    The war has killed more than 20,000 people according to
local health authorities in Hamas-run Gaza and wounded 50,000
more, all while hospitals have been put out of action and
medical supplies nearly exhausted. 
    While some aid has entered Gaza in recent weeks via Egypt,
it has been hard to distribute much beyond the immediate border
area and hospitals elsewhere in the enclave are barely able to
function, relief agencies say. 
    Medicins Sans Frontiers, the international medical agency,
said in a social media post on Friday that at Nasser Hospital in
Khan Younis in southern Gaza "doctors are stepping over the
bodies of dead children to treat other children who will die
anyway".
    At the Deir al-Balah field clinic, Hourani was busy
bandaging the head of Maysara Abu Telakh, a boy injured in the
bombardment but discharged early from the local al-Aqsa hospital
because it had more urgent cases to handle. 
    "They had to transfer Maysara to the field hospital, which
is a school, to continue treatment ... the situation here is
difficult especially with medical supplies. There's a lack of
medicine, nurses, even doctors," said the child's father Jihed
Abu Telakh. 
    The family lost its home and is now staying temporarily at
the field clinic while they seek another place to shelter.  

 (Reporting by Doaa Rouqa
Writing by Angus McDowall
Editing by Mark Potter)
 ((angus.mcdowall@thomsonreuters.com; Reuters Messaging:
angus.mcdowall.thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net))