‘There was no bringing them back,’ volunteer doctor recalls
Al Jazeera has spoken with Nour Sharaf, an emergency doctor who spent time volunteering in Gaza, about the desperate conditions inside the enclave’s medical facilities.
“From the second I stepped foot in Gaza, it was very clear that I was going into a destroyed healthcare system,” Sharaf said. “We were treating patients on the floor. We were treating patients with material that’s really only meant to be used once and thrown away, but we had to reuse it. It’s very devastating.”
Sharaf said she saw lots of injured people brought in every day from the US and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation sites, where Israeli forces have repeatedly shot at aid seekers.
“Those patients would come in with gunshot wounds. They would come in with blast injuries. A lot of those injuries are unsurvivable,” she said. “Unfortunately, we also saw a lot of patients who showed up, and there was no bringing them back – they were already dead.”
A Palestinian girl looks on as people carry the body of a person who was killed while seeking food at a distribution point run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) on Salah al-Din Street in Nuseirat
Unpacking the numbers behind Gaza’s wounded
As we’ve been reporting, the number of wounded during Israel’s war on Gaza has today reached at least 150,027.
But that figure does not indicate the true impact:
- At least 18,500 of those wounded will require long-term rehabilitation, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
- At least 4,700 have had one or more limbs amputated as a result of their injuries.
- That figure includes at least 1,000 children who have had their limbs amputated.
- Health workers have warned that malnutrition and unsanitary conditions are leading to regular complications for those wounded in the war.
- Meanwhile, as the death toll has reached at least 60,933, at least 44,500 children have lost at least one parent.
Gaza reporters starved and killed
Almost two years in, the war in Gaza is the deadliest conflict for journalists ever. With no foreign journalists allowed in, Palestinian reporters on the ground are the only ones who can tell the story to the world. But they face death threats, attacks and now, even starvation.
In this episode, Al Jazeera journalist Hind Khoudary talks to The Take on how reporters in Gaza are doing their jobs amid such challenges:
