Doctors in Gaza forced to amputate limbs because they lack resources to treat injuries
Doctors working at hospitals in Gaza have given a harrowing insight into their work as they described having to amputate patients’ limbs even when it should not have been necessary because they do not have the resources to treat injuries.
Dr Bashar Murad, head of al-Quds Hospital in Gaza City where hundreds are being treated and about 15,000 are sheltering, told i doctors are being forced to amputate wounded parts of people’s bodies “to have more chances of saving their life” as they lack operational room to repair burst vessels and muscle tissue.
“This is really, really bad,” said Dr Murad, who lost seven members of his family just a few days ago and fears for his remaining relatives in Khan Younis, a city in the south to which many fled after Israel’s order to evacuate the north. “The number of disabilities will increase after this war.”
The Palestinian Red Crescent said on Sunday it had received warnings from Israeli authorities to immediately evacuate al-Quds Hospital, after there were raids 50 metres from the facility.
An Israeli military spokesman declined to comment when asked about the Palestinian Red Crescent statement at a media briefing.
Dr Murad corroborated reports of the hospital being asked to evacuate as he said the Israeli army told them it “is now a dangerous place”. But patients receiving life-support cannot leave – and many of the medics plan to stay with them.
“We feel like we are on the waiting list,” he said, implying they could be the next to die.
Dr Murad said patients cannot reach Egypt and called for a humanitarian corridor to allow patients to escape and to let medical volunteers in, since “in all of Gaza we don’t have a safe place”.
He said the central warehouse with relief items, which lies close to the hospital, was “partially destroyed” on Sunday night after being attacked. The doors are now open as a result and there is no security.
Patients with second and third degree burns were having to wait a minimum of a week to get treatment as doctors were operating beyond capacity, he added.
When mass casualties occur, “doctors deal only with those who have a chance”, Dr Murad said.
Dr Youssef Akkad, the director of the European Gaza Hospital near Khan Younis, echoed this as he said only those who stand a good chance of surviving will be admitted to the ICU department. Before the war, doctors would spend about 20 minutes on someone suffering from a cardiac arrest, “now we don’t try to save them”, he added.
He said that 60-70 people can arrive at the hospital’s emergency department at one time, and staff are no longer carrying out CPR. “We are not going to try, we will let this patient die and we will select a patient who will benefit from ICU.”
He said if his hospital was asked to evacuate, they wouldn’t be able to as all patients “will die at once”, including 55 in ICU and babies in the neonatal department.
Dr Akkad said patients are at times treated on the floor because the hospital’s eight surgical rooms are not enough when mass casualties arrive.
‘It’s a massacre’
“Some of them lose their life before they reach the operation theatre. We’ve never faced this misery. It’s a massacre,” he said.
Dr Akkad said anaesthetics and antibiotics are needed most at the hospital with patients only getting a day of antibiotics, when they need far more, due to the shortage. “We don’t have enough for every patient so those patients will suffer from sepsis and will die.”
Speaking of painkillers, he said: “For most operations we don’t have enough drugs so most of the time they will be in pain and shouting and some will pass away.”
Many are showing up at the emergency departments with severe burns, Dr Akkad said, but they don’t have a burns unit to treat them.
One girl aged 14 had burns covering 45 per cent of her body, Dr Akkad recounted. “We were giving just simple care but unfortunately she died last night. We didn’t have the way to treat her or the disposables to treat her.”
‘Baby in the corridor’
Speaking of how “every inch” of the hospital has been occupied by thousands of people in need of shelter, water and food, Dr Akkad said patients who get discharged ask to stay as their homes have been bombed out of existence.
“A baby was born and on the same day she was in the same hospital as a refugee, she has no place to stay as her home was bombed. The baby was just in the corridor.
“We can’t fight with them, they are homeless, how can we push them out?”
He called for the war to stop “now” and for medical supplies and fuel to be allowed in, with the hospital using old generators requiring a lot of refuelling.
“There are hundreds of patients who need to be sent abroad for the surgical procedures because we have shortage of supplies,” he said.
Gaza has been subjected to intense bombardment since Israel decided to retaliate against Hamas’s vicious attack on southern Israel which resulted in 1,400 deaths on 7 October.
Israel’s carpet bombing of the Gaza Strip has already killed at least 8,306 Palestinians, including 3,457 children, the health ministry in Hamas-controlled Gaza said on Monday.
Medical officials in al-Shifa and al-Quds hospitals said air strikes had hit near their buildings.
The UN humanitarian office, OCHR, said 117,000 civilians are sheltering alongside thousands of patients and doctors in hospitals in the north of Gaza.
