In a statement on Thursday, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the Director-General of the World Health Organization, warned that “without medicines and other essential needs, all patients will die slowly and painfully.”
He said,
until two days ago, Al-Ahli was northern Gaza’s last hospital functioning where injured people could undergo surgery.
“But our team learned today that its operating theaters are no longer functioning due to the depletion, or complete absence, of specialists, power, fuel, water, food and medical supplies,” Ghebreyesus said.
He added “That has left north Gaza with no functional hospital. Only four hospitals operate at a minimum level, providing very limited care.”
WHO and UN partners, he explained, undertook “another high-risk joint mission” to Al Ahli Arab and Al Shifa hospitals in northern Gaza, where they delivered medicines, IV fluids, and supplies for surgery, treating the wounded, and supporting women giving birth.
PALESTINE CHRONICLE CORRESPONDENT:
Israeli occupation forces blew up a number of homes in the town of Bani Suhaila, east of Khan Yunis Governorate, south of the Gaza Strip.
The Israeli army blows up the entire Palestine Mosque area in the Al-Rimal neighborhood after being… pic.twitter.com/FRi8RX4bOD
— The Palestine Chronicle (@PalestineChron) December 21, 2023
“Catastrophic Conditions”
The WHO chief said his colleagues “struggled to describe the immense impact recent attacks have had on these health facilities and the catastrophic conditions remaining patients and health workers face.”
In the courtyard of Al Ahli Hospital, “bodies were placed in rows as they couldn’t be given safe and dignified burials,” he explained.
About ten health workers, all doctors, and nurses, continue to provide basic first aid, pain management, and wound care.
He said,
80 injured patients, including older people and small children, are sheltering in a church within the hospital grounds and its orthopedic section.
They included a 10-year-old girl who lost her leg and had no family left to care for her, he said.
Israel is using humanitarian aid, access to water and starvation as weapons of war, whilst Israeli air strikes and bombs kill over 20,000 in Gaza, almost half of them children.
Every day of delay, hundreds more will die.
We are witnessing war crimes in real time. Ceasefire Now
— Claudia Webbe MP (@ClaudiaWebbe) December 20, 2023
“And an older man awaiting surgery for a gun wound to the chest he may never get, whose entire family had been killed,” he added.
Ghebreyesus said the WHO will keep striving to supply health facilities in northern Gaza.
“More than ever, a humanitarian ceasefire is needed now to reinforce and restock remaining health facilities, deliver medical services needed by thousands of injured people and those needing other essential care, and, above all, to stop the bloodshed and death,” he stressed.
PALESTINE CHRONICLE CORRESPONDENT
An air strike accompanied by artillery shelling targeted the Shejaiya neighborhood, east of Gaza City.
Israeli air strikes are reported in the Ma'an area, east of Khan Yunis Governorate, south of the Gaza Strip
One Palestinian was killed as a… pic.twitter.com/RHgowOEfDu
— The Palestine Chronicle (@PalestineChron) December 21, 2023
According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, 20,000 Palestinians have been killed, including 8,000 children and 6,200 women, and 52,600 wounded in Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza starting on October 7. Palestinian and international estimates say that the majority of those killed and wounded are women and children.