ZOE MAGEE and RUWAIDA AMER
Thu, May 16, 2024
As the Israeli military intensifies its fight against the militant group Hamas in and around the southern Gaza city of Rafah, thousands are being forced to evacuate and several U.S. citizens are caught up in the confusion after the Israeli military took over the Rafah Crossing on May 7.
Among those uncertain how they will get out of Gaza are a group of medics, who were volunteering with the Palestinian American Medical Association, working at the European Hospital in Khan Younis.
"The U.N. have been working to try to secure a safe passage," Monica Johnston, a burns nurse from Portland, told ABC News in an interview.
"We just don't know when that will be. We keep getting told tentative dates and it keeps getting pushed back. We have a team in Cairo waiting to come and relieve us."
Johnston and 18 other colleagues were meant to leave on Monday, but with the Rafah Crossing closed and Israel Defense Forces activity in the area increasing, the route out was deemed too dangerous.
Johnston told ABC News she didn’t want to leave until the replacement team had arrived. "I want to continue to provide help because I don't want these people abandoned," Johnston said, visibly upset.
"I want the world to know that there are so many innocent people being affected," Johnston told ABC News.
MORE: Protesters in Israel arrested after attacking Gaza aid trucks
PHOTO: A view of Yafa hospital damaged by Israeli strikes, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in the central Gaza Strip, Dec. 8, 2023. (Stringer/Reuters, FILE)
She explained that the longer this team has to wait for their replacements, the harder it is for them to do their jobs as the hospital is running so low on supplies.
"They need to come in, and they need to have their supplies as well," Johnston said, explaining that she is struggling to suitably treat patients as the hospital is running out of basics like soap, hand sanitizer, paper towels, medicines and equipment.
"We’re running out of medications, life sustaining medications that keep the heart running, the blood pumping. Pain medications we have to ration that and that in my position is extremely hard," she said.
"There’s such a lack of infection control. There’s bugs and flies and dirty linen everywhere. Most dressings should be changed daily ... some we are spreading out to every other day. We find that the wound is very contaminated – sometimes they have maggots," Johnston said.
The Rafah Crossing into Egypt has been the main access point for the Gaza Strip since this conflict began when Hamas militants stormed Israel on Oct. 7, killing at least 1,200 Israelis and kidnapping over 250.
On May 7, Israeli tanks entered the crossing and the IDF now control it. They are not allowing any access as they step up their efforts to confront Hamas in the area.
Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant was in Rafah Thursday and announced a ramping up of troops there. "Additional troops will join the ground operation in Rafah," Gallant said.
MORE: Humanitarian workers, doctors describe 'horrific' situation in Rafah as Israel intensifies strikes
PHOTO: A delegation of American and European doctors performs complex surgeries on injured Palestinians at the European Hospital, Dec. 31, 2023, Gaza Strip. (Abed Rahim Khatib/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images)
This increase in military activity has meant the journey in and out of for the PAMA teams is now far more complicated and potentially dangerous.
"The situation since May 7 has gotten even more dire than you can imagine," Johnston said, explaining that many hospital staff have fled the area after the Israeli military instructed the evacuation of nearby Rafah, adding a further burden onto the already over-stretched staff and volunteers who have remained.
"There have been lots of fights amongst people here ... over things like the use of water," Johnson explained. "I am concerned I don’t know how much longer our bottled water supply is going to last."
Tension is running high in the hospital among both patients and staff, Johnston said. "I was leaving the ICU last night and was quickly ushered out as there was a gun fight and a knife fight in the ER. I don’t know what it was over, but you feel the tension, you feel the stress, you feel the anxiety increasing in everyone here."
Johnston has not worked in conflict zones before but her colleague, Dr. Adam Hamawy, has. He was an army medic and served in Iraq where he was responsible for saving the life of Sen. Tammy Duckworth.
Sen. Duckworth has been in regular contact with Hamawy, posting to X (formally known as Twitter) on May 14, "I'm in direct contact with Dr. Hamawy and am working hard to secure his group's immediate evacuation. Aid workers and innocent civilians should always be protected. The Netanyahu admin must work to open the Rafah crossing, support evacuations and allow much more aid in."
MORE: Northern Gaza experiencing 'full-blown famine': UN official
PHOTO: A general view shows a field hospital operated by the International Committee of the Red Cross, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, May 10, 2024. (ICRC/via Reuters)
Despite being no stranger to conflict, Hamawy said he is distressed by what he has seen in Gaza. "Every patient I have has a story. Every patient I have has been suffering for months. Every patient I have has lost family members. Many of my patients are children that are now orphans because they have lost both their parents," Hamawy told ABC News.
"And it’s not just the patients. It’s everyone that is here in the hospital. It’s the nurses, it’s the doctors, it’s the staff," Hamawy said. "This morning I was talking to one of the nurses that I met when I first came here," Hamawy said, explaining that this man looked exhausted.
"As soon as I asked him how he was and where he had been he collapsed and started weeping, telling me the ordeal he has been through," Hamawy said.
That nurse had evacuated his family out of Rafah, taking his wife and two young daughters to where the Israelis had indicated was safe.
"This place had nothing. It was basically desert. There was no water. There was no food, no shelter, no tents, no bathrooms. He said they lived like animals. When they had to use the facilities, they had to dig a hole. He said at night it was freezing and during the day he was extremely hot,” Hamawy said.
Both Hamawy and Johnston said they are filled with empathy and admiration for the patients they have treated and the Palestinian colleagues they have worked with.
"I feel very grateful to be here and provide that little level of comfort and safety for them," Johnston said, adding, "The amount of trauma that everybody has suffered here and the triggers that are going to happen lifelong is heartbreaking."
US working to get trapped American doctors out of Gaza, White House says
Reuters
Updated Wed, May 15, 2024
US working to get trapped American doctors out of Gaza, White House says
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre holds a briefing in Washington
(Reuters) -The Biden administration is working to get a group of U.S. doctors out of Gaza after Israel closed the Rafah border crossing, the White House said on Wednesday.
The State Department said earlier this week that the government was aware that American doctors were unable to leave Gaza, after the Intercept reported that upwards of 20 American doctors and medical workers were trapped in Gaza.
The Palestinian American Medical Association, a U.S.-based non-profit, said on Monday that its team of 19 healthcare professionals, including 10 Americans, had been denied exit from Gaza after a two-week mission providing medical services at the European Hospital in Khan Younis, a city near Rafah in southern Gaza.
Israel seized and closed the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt on May 7, disrupting a vital route for people and aid into and out of the devastated enclave.
"We're tracking this matter closely and working to get the impacted American citizens out of Gaza," White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters on Wednesday.
Jean-Pierre said the United States was engaging directly with Israel on the matter.
The Biden administration has been warning Israel against a major military ground operation in Rafah, but Jean-Pierre said efforts to get the doctors out are continuing regardless of what happens there.
"We need to get them out. We want to get them out and it has nothing to do with anything else," she said.
Israeli troops battled militants across Gaza on Wednesday, including in Rafah, which had been a refuge for civilians, in an upsurge of the more than seven-month-old war that has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians.
Gaza's healthcare system has essentially collapsed since Israel began its military offensive there after the Oct. 7 cross-border attacks by Palestinian Hamas militants on Israelis.
Humanitarian workers sounded the alarm last week that the closure of the Rafah and Kerem Shalom crossings into Gaza could force aid operations to grind to a halt.
The Israeli assault on Gaza has destroyed hospitals across Gaza, including Al Shifa Hospital, the Gaza Strip's largest before the war, and killed and injured health workers.
(Reporting by Nandita Bose; Writing by Brendan O'Boyle; Editing by Doina Chiacu and Eric Beech)
Opinion:
I'm an American doctor stuck in Gaza. As Israel moves into Rafah, where will physicians and our patients go?
Mahmoud Sabha
Wed, May 15, 2024
Smoke rises from a fire in a building caused by Israeli bombardment in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on May 10. (AFP via Getty Images)
As an American doctor, I felt called to help Palestinians who have faced a collapsing healthcare system in Gaza. My first trip was in March and I returned for another mission earlier this month, before the Israeli military assault on Rafah, in southern Gaza, which has been catastrophic. Now we have no way out.
Israel’s seizure of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt has complicated our medical team’s departure from Gaza, which was coordinated with the World Health Organization and scheduled for Monday.
Read more: Opinion: Do campus protests show Americans' support for Palestinians has reached a turning point?
We have been at the European Hospital in Khan Yunis, near Rafah. If we leave, and no new mission can get in, the patients here will be abandoned and terrified. More than 1 million people had taken refuge in Rafah during the Israeli bombardment of northern Gaza, and hundreds of thousands have now been forced to flee the area amid Israel’s offensive here.
Our patients ask me where they should go, to which hospital. They tell me that some facilities are still open and ask my opinion of them. What do I say? The patients know full well about the destruction of the Al Shifa and Nasser hospitals. They know patients have been killed with IV lines and catheters still inside, and they believe that will be their fate as well if they are left alone and vulnerable to the Israeli forces.
Read more: Granderson: Biden is right to nudge Israel toward protecting civilians in Rafah
Meanwhile, limited humanitarian aid is getting in. The medical supplies entering Gaza often come in with new volunteers. I brought eight pieces of checked luggage, full of wound-care supplies for this mission. We get patients with wounds over 60% to 80% of their bodies, but we don’t even have absorbent pads to keep their wounds dry, which is necessary to prevent hypothermia.
The Rafah invasion is also worsening the displacement of both the patients’ and the medical staff’s families. Given the hospital’s staffing shortages, families are doing half the work of the nurses. They help turn patients. They help change their diapers. They transfer them to the clinic and back to the ward. They feed them. The patients would be nowhere without their families.
Read more: My family in Gaza faces starvation. How do I find solace this Ramadan?
If the hospital were abandoned or their families were forced to evacuate, I have no clue how these patients would survive, especially those with amputations restricting their movement. I imagine the patients saying a final goodbye to their loved ones.
Some doctors and nurses have been volunteering here for a long time. Some of us have been to Gaza several times. Yet we continue to be shocked by the cruelty. We are not used to this degree of carnage. Even the local staff continues to be shocked.
Read more: Opinion: I'm an American doctor who went to Gaza. What I saw wasn't war — it was annihilation
The local medical staff have avoided telling the patients that our team may have to evacuate before the next set of aid workers can arrive, for fear it would cause a massive panic. Nobody likes talking about evacuation. I can tell they don’t even like to use the word. Even if as doctors, we can’t save people given the limited resources, at least as foreigners, we can provide some protection, standing as a shield against a potential massacre of the patients.
We are still working with the WHO to leave safely, despite the Rafah border closing. Though, it is disturbing that on our planned exit date, a United Nations-marked vehicle was shot at and a foreign aid worker killed.
In the meantime, we will continue to see our patients and provide medical care for as long as we are here. Our organization’s next team is waiting in Cairo, hoping to start their mission.
I remain inspired by the fortitude of the people I’ve met. When some of my patients are under conscious sedation for their dressing changes, their inner selves come out, and many of them call to God. One patient repeated the shahada — the Muslim testimony of faith. Another whose voice I hadn’t heard before raised his hands to the air as he woke, making dua, a prayer of supplication to God.
I hope that the border crossing will reopen and that a new team with more resources will arrive. I hope for a cease-fire to end this man-made humanitarian disaster. For now, as long as I am able to testify to the strength of people in Gaza and share that with the world, I am honored to be among these individuals, who have given me more than I have given them.
Mahmoud Sabha is a wound care physician from La Palma, Calif., residing in Dallas.
No comments:
Post a Comment