Many people in Gaza are dying due to a “totally” crippled health care system, a situation exacerbated by recent bombings by Tel Aviv that have further strained the enclave’s already limited medical resources, a Palestinian doctor said.
Speaking to Anadolu, Ibrahim Elakkad, who served as head of ENT department at Nasser Medical Complex, Gaza’s one of the largest hospitals, until February, said the public and private health systems almost “no longer exist.”
Elakkad is currently in Pakistan’s port city of Karachi, where his wife, an English teacher at a now-dysfunctional Gaza school, has recently undergone eye surgery.
“Israeli forces have been deliberately targeting health facilities and medical professionals with an open intention to kill more and more people,” Elakkad, whose brother and sister have been killed in Israeli bombing last year, said, recounting the harrowing scenes.
During the interview, he received the news about the killing of his cousin, and the latter’s children in Israeli bombing on the first day of Eid al-Fitr in Gaza.
Elakkad is currently residing in Egypt, and waiting for a pause in bombing to return to Gaza to join his duty.
Most of the big hospitals, he said, are dysfunctional now because of relentless Israeli bombing. The only one still working with 50% capacity is the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis city.
Al-Shifa Hospital, Gaza’s largest health facility, located in the neighborhood of northern Rimal, has returned to its “minimal functionality” amid an acute shortage of doctors, equipment and medicines, he added.
Regarding the private health care centers, he said: “100% are out of work after being destroyed because of Israeli bombing.”
Most of the doctors, according to Elakkad, have either left Gaza, or have been killed and arrested by Israeli forces.
“There is an acute shortage of surgeons and specialists as they have either been evacuated to Egypt or sent to Israeli jails,” he further said.
– ’THINGS ARE SCARIER THAN IMAGINATION’
Elakkad, who had studied at Sindh Medical University Karachi from 1985 to 1991, said that doctors, who are still serving in Gaza, are facing obstacles in performing their duties, ranging from a lack of equipment to a lack of disposables, and to shortages of medicines, including life-saving and anesthetic drugs.
“So many” patients, he noted, have died of septicemia, hemorrhage, and bleeding because of the unavailability of surgeons.
There are no MRI scanners — a crucial medical tool — in the whole Gaza Strip as they have all become damaged and were unable to be fixed due to the perpetual bombings.
Also, he added, operating on children with brain tumors and only having CT scans is really quite challenging.
“Things are scarier than your imagination. Injured and normal patients, writhing in pain, are being treated on the floor, in the corridors and even in the open air, meaning they are heavily prone to deadly infections, and septicemia,” Elakkad maintained.
“And even then, they are not safe as Israeli jets often bomb hospitals on the pretext of targeting fighters.”
“If you are lucky enough to escape bombing, then infections are there to kill you.”
Late last month, Israeli forces bombed Nasser hospital’s surgical department, killing two wounded Palestinians under treatment, dubbing one of them a Hamas fighter.
“He was not a (Hamas) leader or fighter. He was just a wounded person,” Elakkad said.
The Israeli army launched a surprise aerial campaign on the Gaza Strip on March 18, killing over 920 people, injuring more than 2,000 others and shattering the ceasefire and prisoner exchange agreement. More than 50,250 Palestinians have been killed, mostly women and children, and over 114,000 injured in a brutal Israeli military onslaught on Gaza since October 2023.
The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants last November for Netanyahu and his former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its war on the enclave.