“World Health”: The health system in Gaza is collapsing at a very rapid pace

Gaza (Union)

Yesterday, World Health Organization officials expressed their concern about the possibility of the collapse of hospitals in the southern and central Gaza Strip, with many medical personnel and patients fleeing for their lives.
Only about a third of Gaza's hospitals are functioning, and some of them are only partially functioning, as a result of the ongoing bombing and fighting in central and southern Gaza, which increases pressure on the overburdened hospitals that are still open.
Sean Casey, coordinator of emergency medical teams for the World Health Organization in Gaza, said during a press conference: “What we are seeing around Al-Aqsa Hospital and the intensification of hostilities very close to Gaza’s European Hospital and Nasser Hospital raises real concern.”
He added, “We cannot lose these health facilities. They must certainly be protected. They are the last line of secondary health care and the last in Gaza from north to south, and they are destroying one hospital after another.”
He stated that patients are risking their lives to reach hospitals in the city of Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip due to the continuing fighting.
During his visit to Al-Aqsa Hospital in central Gaza two days ago, Casey discovered that 70% of his employees had left their jobs. He said: Hundreds of patients who were in good condition to escape did the same thing on the same night.
He added that many workers at Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis also joined hundreds of thousands of Gazans crowded into shelters in the far south of the Strip.
He said there was only one doctor for more than 100 burn patients there.
He added, “We still see that the health system is suffering. Health workers cannot go to their workplaces to care for patients because they fear for their lives. Patients and their families are afraid to go to hospitals because they may die on the way.”
He added, “We are witnessing the collapse of the health system at a very rapid pace.”
In turn, Rick Pepperkorn, the representative of the World Health Organization in the occupied Palestinian territories, said in the same press conference: “Delivering medical aid into Gaza has become difficult for the organization.” He added, “We are witnessing a complex and shrinking humanitarian field due to the extension of hostilities to the south and the difficulty of working there.”
In addition, Doctors Without Borders announced that family members of its staff were injured as a result of the targeting of a refugee home in the south of the Gaza Strip.
4 people from the families of its cadres were injured after a mortar shell fell on a house containing refugees in Khan Yunis, south of the Gaza Strip.
The statement indicated that among the wounded was a 5-year-old girl.
The organization stressed that it had not received any warning to evacuate the house before it was bombed, and reiterated its assertion that there is no safe place in Gaza.