"I do not know how I feel.
It's a mixture of frustration, depression, anxiety... We don't even have the notion of being alive.
We are just machines that try to make the days go by one by one.”
Ruba, a doctor from Doctors Without Borders (MSF), answers this newspaper's questions with voice messages that she sends with difficulty, due to the unstable and precarious connections in Gaza.
Until October 7, the day this offensive broke out, this doctor, who does not want her full name to be published, was working with MSF in Khan Yunis, south of the Strip, with trauma patients.
Now, displaced in Deir el Balah, in the center of the Palestinian enclave, she treats injured people and provides cures in their surroundings with first aid material provided by the NGO, which on January 6 evacuated its staff from the hospital for security reasons. Al Aqsa - a center that continues to function partially, despite the lack of personnel and material resources and the proximity of the bombings.
“In recent weeks it was very difficult to get any kind of connection and the Palestinian Red Crescent could not know where the bombings were taking place, where the wounded were and how to bring them to the hospital, the only one that continues to partially function in this city,” Ruba explains.
The doctor lives in a small rented apartment in Deir el Balah, after being forced to leave her home in Beit Hanoun, in the north, in the first days of bombing.
Thirty people from the same family, half of them children, are divided into two rooms.
“I still think that those who died in the first days were very lucky.
We never imagined this would last this long.
We are already in the fourth month, the war continues and no one cares about the Palestinians, our children, our pain,” explains this 32-year-old doctor, who has a son and two daughters aged seven, six and two.
Those who died in the first days were very lucky.
We never imagined this would last this long.
Ruba, doctor with Doctors Without Borders (MSF)
In recent days, Palestinian journalists, local NGOs and witnesses have reported shelling very close to the Al Aqsa hospital area.
“There is a lack of beds, equipment, personnel and access to the hospital is really difficult.
A week ago the tanks were very close.
Imagine a hospital with 7,000 people, including sick people, staff and displaced people, who fled their homes seeking refuge there and now have to evacuate again,” adds Dr. Ruba.
Israeli attacks have already killed more than 26,000 Gazans since October 7, when militants from the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, which
de facto
rules Gaza, carried out an unprecedented attack on Israeli territory, killing some 1,200 people and more. Of 200 were kidnapped.
In addition, the number of injured in the Strip exceeds 65,000, according to figures from the local Ministry of Health.
A surgeon operates on a patient in an operating room at the European Hospital in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, on December 31.- (AFP)
“My son asked a few days ago: 'Mom, can we leave Gaza now?
I just want to leave.'
Imagine a 7-year-old boy asking that, telling you that he just wants to live,” recalls Dr. Ruba.
“He told me: 'I'm afraid that the tanks will come close, that we won't be able to get food or water, that we'll die of hunger, I'm afraid that you'll die in my arms, mom, because someone shoots you, the helicopters shoot you, and “We can’t save you,” explains this MSF worker.
Without a rest
Ibrahim also prefers that his last name not be published.
This young man is in his fifth year of medicine, but since the beginning of the Israeli military offensive he has been working tirelessly at the Al Aqsa hospital, in the orthopedic surgery department, where he arrived as a volunteer when the bombings began.
“I never imagined having to practice this way even before finishing my studies, but doctors were needed,” he says.
This twenty-something from Gaza practically never leaves the hospital.
He eats, sleeps and works inside of him.
His family has moved to the south, with many difficulties and sometimes sleeping on the street, and he is sad to hear from them.
Communicating with Ibrahim is also very difficult, due in large part to the connection blackouts that the Strip has suffered, which in some cases have lasted for days.
When he reappears, his messages are telegraphic, sometimes accompanied by a photograph in which he shows minor interventions, bullet extractions or healing of impressive wounds infected by lack of care.
Most of the images show patients on the floor and him, kneeling before them, working.
I never imagined having to practice this way even before finishing my studies, but doctors were needed
Ibrahim, medical student
“I'm still alive,” he says by way of greeting.
“But this is getting worse every day.
The hospital continues to operate, at half throttle, with an enormous lack of personnel and material resources.
We have the minimum.
This is not a movie, every minute we lose patients,” she states.
—How many patients are arriving at the hospital each day?
—“Many, too many.”
—Dozens?
—“There have been terrible days when there were several hundred.”
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), of the 24 hospitals in the northern part of Gaza, only seven are open, but operating without enough staff, materials or fuel.
Of the 12 medical centers in the southern part, only seven remain partially operational.
The UN organization expresses its concern about reports received about military raids in some medical centers, arrests of health personnel, pits to bury bodies in the courtyards of the clinics, bombings in the vicinity of these hospitals and wounded people who cannot access the hospitals. minimal care.
The painful decision to evacuate
Carolina López, MSF emergency coordinator, worked for several weeks at the Al Aqsa hospital, along with fifty NGO employees.
“There were an average of 700 patients hospitalized.
The day we received the fewest injuries was around 40. On December 28 there was a peak and 300 people arrived.
In addition, there were people seeking refuge from the bombs in the hospital area,” she explains to this newspaper, confirming Ibrahim's statements.
On January 4, the evacuation of the hospital began.
The front advanced, the Israeli tanks were two kilometers from the medical center and patients, displaced people and medical personnel began to leave.
MSF also decided to abandon the medical center due to no longer being able to guarantee the safety of its staff and the rotation of equipment.
A woman hugs her daughter, injured in an Israeli bombing, at the Nasser hospital in Khan Yunis, on January 22. Mohammed Dahman (AP)
“Leaving your patients is a very difficult decision, but we have no other choice,” explains López with a broken voice.
“The hospital was left crippled without us, it's clear, although it also went from having 700 patients to having about 140. Those who couldn't leave.
But there were other injured people who continued and continue to arrive, because it is the only hospital in that area,” adds this Spanish worker, emphasizing that in 17 years of experience in emergencies “she had never imagined” experiencing such a extreme situation.
A WHO mission was able to access the Deir el Balah hospital in mid-January and found that only 12 doctors were still working there, a figure that represents 10% of its staff.
López has maintained some contact with a couple of doctors who stayed at Al Aqsa hospital after the evacuation.
"They did it assuming all the consequences, knowing that they ran an enormous risk, because we have already seen what has happened in other hospitals...", he sighs.
A WHO mission was able to access this hospital in Deir el Balah in mid-January and found that only 12 doctors were still working there, a figure that represents 10% of its staff.
The emergency coordinator insists on highlighting the role of Gaza's health workers, who "are exhausted and have not stopped for more than 100 days."
López explains that those who have families go to work, putting their lives in danger to get to the hospital, and they don't know what will happen to their children while they are gone.
And those who do not have immediate family or have settled in the southern end of the Strip, in Rafah, return to the hospitals and work non-stop for days.
“They are terrible conditions, you have to be there to feel it,” she summarizes.
Last weekend, MSF reported that the Nasser Hospital, the most important one still operating in all of Gaza, located in Khan Younis, in the south, is practically no longer operational due to the intense fighting and bombing in the area, which caused the majority of sick people, refugees and medical personnel will flee the place.
There are between 300 and 500 injured people in the center who could not be evacuated due to their serious condition.
“Nasser's surgical capacity is now almost non-existent and the few medical personnel who remain in the center must face the situation with meager supplies, insufficient to deal with large influxes of wounded,” the NGO warned.
A paramedic treats a wounded man in a Rafah hospital on January 23. Hatem Ali (AP)
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