Gaza: Insecurity is preventing patients from health care

More than a week after air strikes started on Gaza Strip and following the beginning of the land incursion of Israeli forces, surgical services are overwhelmed and in need of surgeons specialised in vascular surgery in order to deal with the number of wounded. In Gaza city, the intensive care unit of Shifa referral hospital has reached the limits of its capacity. The insecurity is preventing patients needing post operative follow up and health personnel from reaching health structures.

Three expatriate volunteers of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) - a field coordinator, a doctor and a nurse arrived in Gaza Strip on Wednesday the 31st of December, to reinforce the local teams composed of 35 health personnel. The intensity of the bombing hasn’t allowed MSF to continue with post-operative care in the MSF clinic in Khan Younis in the south. This clinic has been closed since the beginning of the air raids, and is now no longer accessible from the north as the Gaza Strip has been cut in two.

In Beit Lahia, the insecurity has repeatedly forced our teams to interrupt the paediatric activities despite several attempts to provide consultations and relieve the work load of  doctors in Kamel Edwan hospital. Since the land incursion on the night of the 4th of January, the intense violence has lead MSF to give up its intervention in this northern part of Gaza strip. Finally, in Gaza city hardly any patients have been able  to go to the MSF clinic where  our teams continue  providing post operative and medical follow up for wounded who are referred from Shifa referral hospital.

MSF is adapting its activities  to reach people in need of medical help who are unable to leave their homes due to the insecurity. Local MSF doctors, nurses and physiotherapists have taken medical supplies to their own neighbourhoods and are providing care and distributing medical material to meet the immediate needs of patients living in their vicinity. In response to a request from Shifa referral hospital, MSF is attempting to send a surgical team into Gaza Strip. MSF is also trying to send a mobile hospital unit with an operating theatre and an intensive care unit, and medical material for treating the wounded and supplying hospitals, in order to help them deal with the numerous emergencies  they are facing in  Gaza Strip.