15 October 2023 – In the north of the Gaza Strip the situation is dramatic, hospitals are overloaded and drugs and painkillers are running out. The wounded scream in pain, while those who need treatment are unable to reach hospitals due to the risk of bombing.
This is what some members of the Doctors Without Borders (MSF) team report who have remained in the northern Gaza Strip, continuing as far as possible to treat the wounded in hospitals, or who are seeking refuge with their families.
Access to water throughout the day was extremely difficult, in the north as well as in the south of the Strip. Here people are crowded into precarious makeshift camps, where access to water and food is extremely limited and the bombings continue.
Below is the testimony of Dr. Mohammed Abu Mughaiseeb, deputy medical coordinator of MSF in Gaza:
“The situation in Gaza is very difficult. Today we searched for 2 hours for drinking water, which is no longer available. There is no electricity and not even ordinary [not necessarily drinking] water is pumped anymore. We still have some food supplies.
Hospitals are barely functioning. Most of the medical staff have left the hospital and left with their families because this is no longer a safe place.
Stocks of medicines are running out, even in private pharmacies.
It’s very dangerous. They bomb all day, there are no humanitarian corridors. Today I managed to get in touch with some hospitals, in particular with the burns department of Al Shifa Hospital. There is only a surgeon and an anesthetist but there is a lack of nurses, especially in this department.
We don’t know what will happen tomorrow and where we will be.”
