Earlier than Israel’s invasion of Gaza final yr, Dr. Mahmoud Al-Reqeb labored in one of many Palestinian territory’s largest hospitals and had a non-public clinic, caring for girls all through their pregnancies.
Now, he lives in a plastic tent in Rafah, a Palestinian border city the place roughly half of Gaza’s inhabitants has sought refuge, and treats sufferers for no cost in one other tent. Residing beneath Israeli bombardment, with shortages of meals and clear water, the pregnant ladies he serves wrestle to seek out primary security and nourishment, not to mention prenatal care.
Because the Israeli army started bombarding Gaza six months in the past following the Hamas-led Oct. 7 assault, its forces have wrecked complete hospitals, struck ambulances and killed or detained a whole bunch of health-care staff. Israeli restrictions on items coming into Gaza have prevented lifesaving medical provides from reaching sufferers, in line with support teams. And shortages of gasoline, water and meals have made it tough for medical staff to supply primary providers.
The outcome has been the close to collapse of a well being care system that after served Gaza’s inhabitants of greater than two million. By late March, of the 36 large-scale hospitals throughout Gaza, solely 10 had been “minimally useful,” in line with the World Well being Group.
Israeli officers say that medical facilities have been targets as a result of Hamas fighters embed themselves inside and beneath the amenities, and that it’s the solely strategy to root out the armed group. Hamas and medical staff have denied this accusation. Help teams, researchers and worldwide our bodies have more and more been calling Israel’s dismantling of Gaza’s medical capability “systematic.”
“In case you engineered the destruction of a well being care system, you’d find yourself precisely the place we’re at the moment,” mentioned Ciarán Donnelly, a senior vice chairman on the Worldwide Rescue Committee, an support group that has been working in Gaza.
Mr. Donnelly mentioned he had labored within the humanitarian support sector for twenty years and couldn’t consider some other struggle wherein a medical system has been so totally crushed so shortly.
Requested for remark, the Israeli army referred to earlier statements it has made about Hamas fighters’ embedding themselves in amenities. Proof examined by The New York Instances suggests Hamas has used Al-Shifa hospital — which the Israeli army has raided — for canopy, saved weapons inside it and maintained a prolonged tunnel. The Israeli army has not introduced equally expansive proof about many of the different well being care facilities it has attacked.
Dr. Al-Reqeb’s outdated facility, Nasser Hospital, was raided by Israeli troops in February. When he goes to his new job, at an Emirati-funded hospital — one of many few amenities in Gaza offering specialised gynecological and obstetric providers — he’s one in every of fewer than 10 docs treating 500 sufferers a day with a “extreme lack of provides, workers, drugs and gear,” he mentioned.
“I used to be very shocked once I realized the extent of injury the medical system is struggling,” Dr. Al Reqeb, 33, mentioned in a phone interview. “It’s utterly destroyed.”
The devastation of the medical system has rippled all through Gaza. Most cancers sufferers have needed to halt chemotherapy. Individuals with kidney failure have misplaced entry to lifesaving dialysis. Pregnant ladies have gone with out the monitoring that might assist establish life-threatening circumstances like pre-eclampsia.
“Generally I cry,” mentioned Dr. Zaki Zakzook, an oncologist who was as soon as one in every of Gaza’s pre-eminent most cancers docs and now lives in a tent together with his household in Khan Younis. “I’m watching my sufferers being executed, slowly and steadily.”
Dr. Zakzook has been capable of do little for his sufferers because the struggle pressured the closing of the most cancers hospital the place he labored, he mentioned. He now sees sufferers at a hospital within the south however now not offers them chemotherapy, fearing that doing so would weaken their immune techniques at a time when the medical system is unable to deal with an infection, he mentioned. As an alternative, he gives palliative care, like painkillers.
“I’m making an attempt to do my greatest, others try the identical, however what can we do?” he mentioned.
In February, Israeli forces stormed Nasser Hospital, a big facility in Khan Younis. They shelled the hospital’s orthopedic division and detained dozens of well being care staff, in line with Docs With out Borders, an support group whose workers members witnessed the assault.
“The proof at our disposal factors to deliberate and repeated assaults by Israeli forces towards Nasser Hospital, its sufferers and its medical workers,” the group wrote. The Israeli army mentioned it had been looking for Hamas fighters and the our bodies of Israelis taken captive through the Oct. 7 assault.
In March, the Israeli army raided Al Shifa Hospital for a second time, killing practically 200 folks it referred to as terrorists. Israeli troops left widespread devastation of their wake after prolonged gun battles with Palestinian militants in and across the advanced. It mentioned its troops had come beneath hearth from gunmen inside and round one of many hospital’s buildings. The Gazan authorities mentioned that 200 civilians had died within the raid. Neither assertion may very well be independently verified.
After the raid, the hospital premises had been plagued by useless our bodies and shallow graves, in line with the World Well being Group, which led a group this month to judge the hospital’s situation.
In a press release after its go to to the ability, the W.H.O. mentioned the hospital was “an empty shell,” with no sufferers and most of its gear “unusable or decreased to ashes.”
“There’s rising proof {that a} purple cross or purple crescent really places a goal on you, relatively than the opposite method round, and it’s simply an appalling degradation of human values,” mentioned Dr. Tim Goodacre, a surgeon who has been touring to Gaza for years to assist prepare Palestinian docs and volunteered at a hospital there in January.
Earlier than the struggle, Abdulaziz Saeed’s 63-year-old father was anticipating to obtain a kidney transplant in March. Mr. Saeed and his mom had each been accepted as potential donors. Then the struggle started. The physician who was to carry out the operation was killed, Mr. Saeed mentioned, and “all our plans have been canceled.”
His household now shares its dwelling with dozens of displaced folks within the metropolis of Deir al Balah, and his father, who beforehand wanted three dialysis classes per week for renal failure, is ready to obtain just one per week at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital.
“The most important concern is the shortage of medical workers,” Mr. Saeed mentioned. “There was once three specialised docs within the kidney division. Two of them had been killed, and the third is unreachable.”
Anas Saad, a 24-year-old nurse who works on the hospital, mentioned a lot of his colleagues had give up after the repeated assaults on medical amenities.
“That is now not a secure place,” Mr. Saad mentioned. “I’m doing my greatest to assist folks survive. Nevertheless, it’s turning into extraordinarily dangerous, as hospitals will be stormed or bombed anytime.”
Dr. Tanya Haj Hassan, an American pediatric intensive-care physician, not too long ago entered Gaza as a part of a group of overseas docs to volunteer on the hospital. She described “apocalyptic” scenes, together with a lady who, she mentioned, died after an Israeli bulldozer ran over a tent, crushing her, and a boy in a wheelchair whose complete household had been killed however who believed that his mother and father had been coming to get him as a result of “no person has the guts to inform him.” Her account couldn’t be independently verified.
The whole lot of Gaza “simply feels prefer it was hit by a nuclear bomb,” she mentioned. “The fact is, they’ve taken out hospital at a time. ‘Hospital at a time’ — I can’t consider I’m even saying these phrases.”
Hwaida Saad contributed reporting from Beirut, Lebanon, and Johnatan Reiss from Tel Aviv.