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Volunteer medics shocked by unprecedented scale of Gaza injuries
Foreign doctors returning from Gaza describe being left “speechless” by the overwhelming scenes of trauma in the enclave’s hospitals.
Shariq Sayeed, a vascular surgeon from Atlanta, Georgia, says his team treated 40 to 60 patients a day, most of them young people with shrapnel injuries he had never seen before.
“Most were patients 13, 14, 15, 16 and 17 years of age,” Sayeed said. “… And unfortunately, there is a very high incidence of infection, … so once you have an amputation that doesn’t heal, you end of getting a higher amputation.”
Ismail Mehr, an anaesthesiologist from New York who led the medical mission, said the foreign doctors were “speechless” when they saw the number of injuries and warned that a looming Rafah offensive would push Gaza’s health sector beyond its capacity.
“I hope and I pray that Rafah is not attacked,” Mehr said. “The health system will not be able to take care of that. It will be a complete catastrophe.”
Gaza’s hospitals ‘lack everything you can think of’
Mosab Nasser, head of the Fajr Scientific foundation medical non-profit that sends doctors to Gaza, says a team of recently arrived surgeons and physicians are working in tough conditions in Khan Younis’s European Gaza Hospital to treat dozens of patients per day.
“We operated before in al-Shifa Hospital, at Nasser Hospital, and at the European Hospital. Unfortunately, al-Shifa and Nasser are almost nonexistent at this point so our focus has been… at the European Hospital,” Nasser told Al Jazeera.
“Based on our experience so far, [the facility] lacks everything you can think of,” he said. “We bring everything we can carry with us to keep the team functional.”
Nasser added that limited operating space was also complicating efforts by different aid groups to provide medical care and that efforts are under way to better coordinate their health response.
“We’re trying to bring the different organisations together to work under … one plan, to be more effective on the ground, especially given the limited resources,” he said.
