Four Palestinian sisters, each under the age of 12, were rushed to the only still functioning hospital in central Gaza, shot and wounded by an Israeli drone.
A girl lost her arm. Two underwent surgery to save their legs. The other is dead.
These are the first cases three Orange County medical professionals witnessed last month while visiting Gaza as part of a volunteer rescue mission.
Carrying suitcases full of medical supplies and medicines, Dr. Haifaa Younis, obstetrician-gynecologist, Dr. Jawad Khan, hand surgeon, and Omar Sabha, operating room nurse, traveled to Gaza to assist in providing medical care in any way. they could.
They recently returned and, this week, shared what they saw with the world.
Some of what they said was widely publicized. Since October 7, when Hamas militants attacked Israel, killing 1,139 people, mostly civilians, and taking around 253 hostages, the Israeli military response in the Gaza Strip has been relentless. The most urgent result of this violence has been the loss of human life; More than 34,000 people have been killed in Gaza over the past seven months, most of them women and children. More than 450 of those killed in Gaza were health workers.
But the three volunteers also focused on something that is obvious but not as widely covered: the destruction of Gaza’s medical infrastructure.
A small network of modern hospitals in pre-war Gaza has been reduced to a series of mostly damaged buildings, makeshift medical work and luck, good and bad. Trained medical professionals in Gaza work tirelessly to save the seriously injured, using makeshift equipment in decidedly unsanitary conditions and with medicines – when they have them – that are often not suitable for the task.
The three residents, Younis, Khan and Sabha, were part of a team of medical professionals who joined this effort from April 1-11. They were in Gaza as volunteers for Humanity Auxilium, a nonprofit organization that provides humanitarian aid around the world. .
They began their journey in Cairo, Egypt. After having their passports checked, they spent the next 14 hours driving on the road to Gaza, a journey that took around 5 hours before the war. Along the way, they passed through several checkpoints and encountered kilometers of trucks and vehicles filled with medical supplies and food that would help the people of Gaza. But the trucks, they said, were parked and unable to enter Gaza; whatever help they might have had was not allowed in.
“The roads are decimated,” Sabha said. “There are potholes every 20 or 30 feet, so you never drive in a straight line, you always zigzag, going in and out.
“And it’s pitch black… The forces of oppression have cut off all the electricity in the city, so we don’t know where we’re going.
“There is also this fear of the unknown which plays an important role.”
Upon arriving at Al-Aqsa Hospital, Younis said they encountered four types of people: patients, patients’ families, medical staff and, mostly, displaced people who had nowhere to go. The World Health Organization, among others, estimates that more than a million people from Gaza were displaced following the Israeli military response on October 7.
In what remained of the hospital, people filled the hallways, some on beds and many others on the floor. Tents were set up throughout the facility, aiming to create makeshift medical rooms for an ever-increasing number of injured people.
And all day, every day, the doctors said, the work was carried out against a background of insect-like buzzing – the sound of Israeli drones.
Khan and Sabha had never worked in a war zone before. Younis said she was in Iraq when the region was bombed in the first Gulf War, in 1991, but that the horror and destruction she witnessed there was minor compared to the current state of Gaza.
They noted that while Gaza’s health system is “in ruins”, the region’s pre-war health infrastructure is even worse, virtually destroyed. As a result, they said, flies and mosquitoes are commonplace and buzzing around operating rooms even during surgeries. Khan said doctors in Gaza are seeing a 50% infection rate among patients, due to the inability to keep wounds clean, lack of post-operative care, or both.
And the infection rate is just one challenge.
“They have chronic pain,” Khan said. “There are all these amputees everywhere. »
Volunteers emphasized that their counterparts, residents who work in hospitals, are not just doctors, nurses and support staff. They are also mothers, fathers and children. Caring for the flood of wounded – people who are sometimes their neighbors and friends – is only part of their pain.
“They are all still overworked, tired and exhausted,” Khan said.
The shortage of medicines and the destruction of medical equipment contributed to horrific consequences, including amputations, that could otherwise have been avoided.
“We saw a plastic surgeon making surgical cuts with scissors that were too big. You can’t really make precise cuts with these kinds of instruments,” Sabha said. “Amazingly, this guy was able to do it.”
Sabha added: “Need drives innovation. »
According to volunteers, the bombing campaign in Gaza has destroyed much more than homes and infrastructure. The violence left little for the nation’s future.
“You have residents who have very good medical school,” I was told. (But) there is no more training. There’s no more medical school,” Younis said.
“The questions I always asked myself while walking around, why bomb a medical school? Why are you bombing a hospital? In fact, why are you bombing schools, especially when schools have become shelters?
All three doctors remain in contact with their colleagues and patients in Gaza, and all three are committed to returning home.
But Tuesday, May 7, they don’t know when it will take place.
They said the Israeli military push against the Rafah border crossing has had an unexpected consequence: Several Southern California doctors are stuck in the combat zone.
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