Achi news desk-
8 hours ago
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David Nott, consultant surgeon at St Mary’s Hospital, London
Over the past 30 years I have served as a surgeon in war zones around the world. I have treated injuries resulting from various conflicts in Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan and Iraq.
Treating war wounds, blast injuries and gunshot wounds requires special skills. Sometimes wars lead to mass deaths. Of the patients I have seen in more than 30 battlefields, some were so severely injured that even the best healthcare units in the world would not have been able to treat them.
However, most injuries can be treated with modest resources. Most of the patients in those war zones were transported to the hospital within the given time frame, so that the best surgical decisions could be made in time for their treatment.
But I’ve never seen a scene like Gaza before. I recently worked for a month in the city of Rafah in Gaza. Trucks carrying aid were parked for miles on the road to this city, which is located at the southern tip of the Gaza Strip. His wheels jammed.
Most of the NGOs were located on the road from Rafa to Beach Road, but it was a shock to see. I have worked in refugee camps in Syria and Bangladesh, where tents were systematically placed at a safe distance from each other, but here I saw thousands and thousands of people squeezed into a small space.
There were whole families there who only had a polythene sheet over their heads. The lucky ones lived in tents. But even in these tents, six or seven people, including children, lived there, and there was hardly any place to even sit – let alone sleep. There was no toilet facility there. The same scene was to be seen for miles.
My mission in Gaza was not to work as a surgeon on the front line repairing injuries from gunshots and bombs. There I had to be on the second line to deal with the surgical complications of thousands of people.
It was much worse than I had imagined. I was working in the only surgery hospital in Rafa. It had about 40 beds and two operating theatres. But when I arrived, more than 2,000 patients were already lying in the wards, corridors and every empty space.
There were often six to eight patients in one room. Many patients had undergone operations and because they were close together, the risk of infection was greatly increased. Many people had wounds which, despite being stitched up, had opened and pus had accumulated. All were malnourished, because their immunity had become weak.
The medical care that society provides to its people had completely collapsed here. Even during terrible wars in Yemen or Syria, people could at least get basic life saving medicines. But it was not like that in Gaza.
All the pharmacies here were closed and there was a shortage of medicines. Apart from diabetes, even everyday medicines were not available to us for people suffering from cardiological, renal, oncological, hematological diseases. The hospital had 12 renal dialysis machines, ten of which had broken down. There were no antibiotics for chest infections or other gastrointestinal illnesses.
In this atmosphere of anarchy, thousands of people were at the mercy of their fate. The ravages of infectious diseases were clearly visible. The infection had progressed so much in small children that their lungs were filled with pus and they could not breathe.
This condition is called empyema and until now I had only read about it in books. This disease used to occur in the 19th century. Due to the lack of a laboratory, a pathological consultation could not be given to the patients.
The emergency department was packed and patients were lying on the floor. When I was there, the town of Khan-Yusuf, north of Rafah, was being bombed and the wounded there could not get any treatment for 12 hours. Most of them could not see the sun the next day.
The medical care that society provides to its people has collapsed in Gaza. Even during the terrible wars in Yemen-Syria, at least life saving medicines could be given to the people. This is not the case in Gaza.
(from The Economist)
