Israel’s closure of the main border crossing with Gaza has stranded US medical teams in Rafah, while humanitarian officials report a worsening crisis. Doctors must decide who lives and who dies.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Israel’s closure of the main border crossing with Gaza has stranded US medical teams in Rafah, while aid officials report a worsening humanitarian crisis. As NPR’s Jane Arraf reports, veteran volunteer doctors face heartbreaking decisions. And be careful, this story contains references to disturbing injuries.
KELLY: Israel’s closure of the main border crossing with Gaza has stranded U.S. medical teams in Rafah while aid officials report a deepening humanitarian crisis. As NPR’s Jane Arraf reports, veteran volunteer doctors face heartbreaking decisions. And be careful, this story contains references to disturbing injuries.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Non-English language spoken).
JANE ARRAF, BYLINE: Today this is an intensive care unit at a hospital in Rafah. It was recorded by Dr. Ammar Ghanem, one of more than a dozen American doctors and nurses who have worked nonstop since arriving nine days ago.
AMMAR GHANEM: In the last two days, things have gotten worse.
ARRAF: It’s since Israel told people to evacuate because they were sending ground forces to Rafah. They closed the neighboring border post.
GHANEM: I estimate that about two to three patients will die every day in this intensive care unit due to lack of supplies, equipment or medical personnel.
ARRAF: In the ICU, Dr. Ghanem, vice president of the Syrian American Medical Society, shows a colleague an 18-year-old patient.
GHANEM: The most difficult case really is this patient.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: How?
GHANEM: But she can’t be found now.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: This case?
GHANEM: Yeah.
ARRAF: Like many patients, she was injured by shrapnel.
GHANEM: She suffered a skull fracture with part of her brain showing through the skull fracture.
ARRAF: The sedatives they have are not strong enough.
GHANEM: Because we’re using a high dose, and she’s still not sedated.
ARRAF: Israel says it needs restrictions on aid to keep weapons out. Shortages force medical staff to make agonizing choices, deciding which patients to stop treating to give others a better chance at life.
GHANEM: Unfortunately – and I have to put patients’ lives first. So when I say, OK, putting patients’ lives first, I mean, I know that term, but I never used it before until I got here.
ARRAF: Experienced trauma personnel have never seen anything like this.
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HELENA RANCHAL: I am a nurse. I have been doing this work for 20 years and I have never seen the situation we know in Gaza, the scale, the seriousness of the people hospitalized. Many of them are children.
ARRAF: This is Helena Ranchal from Médecins du Monde, during a press briefing on Wednesday. She says that due to the lack of basic supplies, patients are dying from preventable causes.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
RANCHAL: We’re choosing people to say, OK, these injuries, they’re so severe that you’re going to need so many resources that we’re deciding to wait until you die.
ARRAF: Dr Nick Maynard of Oxford University in England was evacuated from Gaza on Monday. He says growing malnutrition contributes to patients’ deaths.
NICK MAYNARD: And I truly believe that we’re seeing the tip of the iceberg in terms of the impact on morbidity and mortality of malnutrition. I think it’s going to get immeasurably worse.
ARRAF: That’s because malnourished patients with traumatic injuries are much less likely to recover.
MAYNARD: The thousands of amputees, their wounds are breaking. Their amputation stumps break. Their bones are exposed. They will then die if left untreated.
MONICA JOHNSTON: Okay. It’s done. They are going to set up a new artistic line (ph).
ARRAF: Today at Rafah Hospital, Monica Johnston, a burn nurse from Portland, Ore., dizzy and nauseous from a gastrointestinal infection, was back in intensive care. One of his patients, a 7-year-old child, suffered burns over more than 80% of his body.
JOHNSTON: We’re running out of pain medications and blood pressure medications. So we cannot keep these people alive or comfortable. It’s absolutely horrible what we’re seeing here.
ARRAF: She said everyone was desperately hoping for a ceasefire.
JOHNSTON: It will allow us to complete our mission, allow new aid to arrive, new supplies to arrive.
ARRAF: And ultimately, she said, allowing the team to return home safely.
Jane Arraf, NPR News, Amman.
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