2024-01-19 21:15:10
To those lucky ones who knew the Gaza before October 7 They still have a hard time accepting the change in the landscape. His disappearance, in short. That was one of the things that most impacted Enrico Vallapertaresponsible of Doctors without borders (MSF), recently arrived from the enclave. “I was there two years ago and it was a small place, but you could still have a normal life,” he recalled at a press conference from Cairo the day after arriving from Gaza. “What I have seen now is a place that is destroyed and what is not destroyed is full of people“explains the MSF medical officer in Gaza, who spent a month in the enclave. His experience includes saturated hospitals, Israeli bombings in their surroundings, and enormous overpopulation where there was even the slightest feeling of less insecurity. “Although there is no no safe place in the enclave,” he recalls.
From the first weeks of the conflict, part of the Gazan population chose hospitals as a place to take refuge. Beyond the hundreds of wounded that tripled the number of beds available in the hospital Al Aqsalocated in the center of the enclave and where Vallaperta has worked, there is “thousands and thousands” of refugees trying to survive among its corridors and nearby. On January 6, the bombings 200 meters from the hospital forced them to make a drastic decision: had to evacuate. “It’s a very tough situation: when you decide to evacuate, it means you have to leave your patients behind because they can’t go anywhere, since there is nowhere they can get to safely,” the health worker stated in front of the media.
Incomprehensible needs
More than 100 days after the start of the offensive against Gaza, which has already claimed at least 24,762 lives, has injured 62,108 people and buried another 7,000 under rubble, the needs are unfathomable. There is no water, there is no food, there is no electricity, there is no communication, there is no medicine, there is no medical supplies. In a context of war, it is especially difficult to get all these resources to the victims. But, in this war, the population that suffers it has from the first day with the sealed borders, with no possibility of more than a few trucks with humanitarian aid entering. “The situation has no precedent“, he denounces Helen Ottens-Patterson, MSF emergency coordinator in Cairo. “The combination of a siege on the entire population, systematic attacks on the civilian population and health centers, the lack of medical care and humanitarian access they make it very difficult for us act appropriately to the needs,” he points out.
This tragic situation has forced the medical and logistical staff of the hospitals in the Gaza Strip to become heroes. “People are working with their own hands and at incredible risk,” Ottens-Patterson says. “Most of them have not stopped working since the beginning of the war,” she adds. For Vallaperta, seeing them arrive at the hospital every day “with a smile“It impacted him even more than the disappearance of the landscape. “It is absolutely stunning how they are able to react,” he says of a professional group that has lost 301 members in the last three months. “Some colleagues have even changed nine times the place where they took refuge to try to survive,” he acknowledges. While the MSF workers attended to the media, their colleagues in the hospital Nasser of Khan Yunis have announced that conditions have become “unbearable”, while Israel continues to attack the vicinity of the facilities, causing the umpteenth flight of thousands of people.
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Malnutrition
During the last 24 hours, Israeli attacks in different parts of the Gaza Strip have continued to kill dozens of people amid a near-total telecommunications blackout. “Compared to other wars, what is happening in Gaza is very different,” clarifies Vallaperta, who worked in Ukraine during the first months of the Russian invasion. “There were many women and children there at first, but after a short time, people were evacuated and went to a safe place; The problem is that there is no place to go here,” he adds. After the evacuation of Al Aqsa, they headed to the south of the enclave, where the majority of the displaced population is crowded. On the border with Egypt, in the town of Rafahwhich previously accommodated its 280,000 citizens, now houses more than a million displaced people.
The needs are enormous, almost as much as the difficulties in satisfying them. “Need broad humanitarian access“claims Ottens-Patterson, while denouncing that, since November, they have not been able to send help or support to their medical teams in northern Gaza. “For this reason, we call for an immediate ceasefire“he claims. With almost the entire population suffering from hunger, the arrival of food is of vital urgency.”We never thought malnutrition would be a problembecause no one expected what we are facing now,” says Vallaperta, acknowledging that “it is very difficult to alleviate it if there is no food in Gaza.” In addition, the absence of medicines to chronic diseases puts the elderly population of the enclave at serious risk. “Our impact is very, very low because there are almost two million people who need medical care, and, in the context that we find ourselves in now, if you compare it with the needs that there are, what we do is not a drop in the bucket. sea, it is really a drop in the ocean,” laments the head of MSF.
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