Geneva (ST) – The World Health Organisation (WHO) warned of the possible collapse of hospitals in southern and central Gaza Strip, as hundreds of medical staff and patients fleeing for their lives from the ongoing brutal Israeli aggression on the Strip.
Reuters quoted WHO emergency medical teams coordinator in Gaza, Sean Casey as saying: “What we are seeing is really worrying around Al-Aqsa Hospital and an intensification of hostilities very close to European Gaza Hospital and very close to Nasser Hospital.”
“We cannot lose these health facilities. They absolutely must be protected. This is the last line of secondary and tertiary health care that Gaza has from the north to the south it has been dropping, hospital after hospital”, Casey added
He stated that patients were risking their lives to get to hospitals in the southern of city of Khan Younis on Tuesday because of the ongoing fighting.
He indicated that during a visit to Al-Aqsa in central Gaza two days ago, he discovered that 70% of staff has deserted their posts, and that same night, hundreds of patients well enough to flee followed suit.
“Many staff at Nasser Hospital in the city of Khan Younis had also joined hundreds of thousands of the people of Gaza crowded into shelters in the Strip’s southern-most tip. There was just one doctor for more than 100 burn victims there”, Casey said.
“The health system is suffering -health workers unable to go their workplace to care for patients because they fear for their lives, and that patients and their families fear to go to hospitals because they may die on the way”, he added.
In turn, the representative of the WHO in the occupied Palestinian territories, Rick Peppercorn, said: “Delivering medical aid into Gaza has become difficult for the organization, and we are witnessing a complex and shrinking humanitarian field due to the extension of hostilities into the south and the difficulty of working in it.”
Najla Khoury