2023-11-19 02:44:00
The World Health Organization (WHO) announced on Saturday that it is working on an evacuation plan for the Al Shifa hospital in Gaza, the target of the Israeli army’s raids against the Islamist group Hamas, and described the place as a “death zone.”
WHO experts spent an hour in the huge hospital complex and said that as of Saturday, 25 caregivers and 291 patients remained there, including 32 babies in critical condition, 22 patients on dialysis and two in intensive care.
Members of the mission described the hospital as a “death zone” where the situation is “desperate,” the organization said in a statement.
“WHO and its partners are urgently developing plans for the immediate evacuation of remaining patients, staff and their families,” the organization said in a statement.
“The team found a hospital that can no longer function: without water, without food, without electricity, without fuel, with depleted medical supplies,” wrote the director general of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, on the social network X (formerly Twitter). .
The director announced that “given the deplorable situation and the condition of many patients, including babies, health personnel requested help to evacuate patients who can no longer receive vital care in that place.”
In its statement, the WHO detailed that the majority of patients who remain there suffer complex fractures and amputations, burns, chest and abdominal trauma, and that 29 suffer serious spinal injuries and cannot move on their own.
Due to poor hygiene conditions and the lack of antibiotics, many hospitalized people also suffer serious infections.
The WHO anticipated that several missions will be organized in the coming days to urgently evacuate the remaining patients to the Nasser hospital and the European hospital in Gaza, although “they are already operating above their capacities.”
According to the Israeli army, which launched a raid on the Al Shifa hospital on Wednesday morning, the medical center houses a Hamas hideout installed, in particular, in a network of tunnels. The Islamist movement denies that accusation.
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