“It has taken me a while to process what I have witnessed and what I know is still going on. For me the most heart-wrenching thing is that these 30,000 wounded do not have access to the kind of treatment that they need and that for many of them their lives are in danger with every passing day, because these wounds are no longer being treated and receiving the medical care they need.
“There are no more hospitals in the northern half of Gaza and what is left in the southern part of Gaza cannot even begin to cover the needs of the injured.
“This has effectively been a war on children. There are now around 8,000 wounded children, 5,000 dead, with another 2,000 thought to be still under the rubble. This is in addition to the hundreds of thousands of mental health injuries, trauma and loss. Before Al Shifa hospital collapsed there were more than 120 children, wounded and treated at the hospital, who were the sole survivors from their families. This number has now increased.
“Yet, in the midst of all of this pain, death and destruction, what has been amazing is these great acts of love that people have for each other, their kids, their siblings, their parents.
“One of the last patients I treated at Al Ahli Hospital before we stopped being able to operate, was a 13-year-old boy who had a right above-knee amputation in his leg and a severely mangled right hand that needed surgery to save the hand.
“When I left the hospital, I told his dad where I would be in southern Gaza. As an able-bodied adult it took me five hours’ walking to get to that hospital in southern Gaza with streets that had been ploughed by tanks and bulldozers. Two days after I arrived in southern Gaza that boy showed up with his dad. His father had pushed a wheelchair with his boy on it, through these ploughed streets for over five hours to get to me, so that I could continue to provide the care that his child needs. It is these heroic or even super-heroic acts of love, that is one of many stories and it is this love that will get people through.
“Faith communities can play a role in trying to rebuild the health sector in Gaza. The attack on the Al Ahli Hospital damaged big parts of the hospital and took them out of service.
“When we, with the help of the staff at the Al Ahli rebuilt part of the hospital within days of the massacre, we were only able to get two operating rooms functioning again and the ground floor wards.
“When I left there were more than 500 wounded patients in the grounds of the hospital. To support Al Ahli Hospital to get back on its feet as soon as possible, to get its maternity services back as early as possible, to get its operating rooms up and running again to treat the wounded again as early as possible, is the most important thing that faith-based communities can do at this moment.
“They have a conduit with which to channel their work: the Al Ahli Hospital.”
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