Gaza’s last hospital at risk of collapse due to Rafah crossing closure
Displaced Palestinians arrive in central Gaza after fleeing from the southern Gaza city of Rafah in Deir al Balah, Gaza Strip. Picture: AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana
Gaza's last remaining major hospital is at critical risk of collapsing as the Rafah crossing closure has blocked fuel from entering which is needed to run the hospital’s generators, a UK surgeon recently returned from Gaza has warned.
Patients are emaciated, many have amputated limbs after bomb blasts, and are already quick to develop infections and bed sores with the lack of basic antibiotics, painkillers, and food in the European Hospital, Mr Juni Sultan, a vascular surgeon who works in the UK said.
But without fuel, which was due to run out on Saturday,life support and dialysis machines would shut down and there would be no lights for surgeons to work in operating theatres, he said.
The Rafah border crossing — which the UN says is the entry point for all of Gaza’s fuel — was seized by the Israeli Defence Forces.
“The current situation is critical. Rafah was the only humanitarian corridor through which any aid was going into the whole of Gaza,” Mr Sultan said.
“So nothing at all is going in now.
“There is no electricity at all. So the hospital runs on generator fuel.
“If that humanitarian corridor is not opened imagine a population 2.2m with no hospital at all.”
The hospital was already struggling with no access to many basic medical supplies before the crossing completely closed. Mr Sultan had to operate on patients without anaesthetic when he volunteered in Gaza last month.
Screaming children injured by bombs had to have amputations without painkillers in the hospital. And Dr Sultan amputated the feet of more than 10 diabetic patients who developed routine infections but due to lack of simple antibiotics, killer flesh-eating bacteria set in.
The corridors of the hospital are lined with hanging sheets which entire families are living behind — cooking, eating, sleeping — refugees hoping that the hospital may be spared from Israel’s bombs which sometimes come so close you can feel the building tremor.
Sterility is impossible there as is containing infectious disease.
The European Hospital, between Khan Younis and Rafah, is the last “fully functional” hospital in Gaza, he said. Of 36 hospitals in Gaza, 31 have been completely destroyed and four were partially working.
Most patients there were suffering the direct impacts of the war, he said.
“The bomb patients come in in very bad shape, their legs are destroyed, they need bilateral amputations.
“We get a large number of shrapnel injuries. Those injuries are very intense. Those shrapnel can make holes in concrete walls so you can imagine what they do to the human body. And the burns are very deep and cause persistent damage.”
But a second category of patients is growing in the hospital — those injured earlier in the war who are now suffering serious complications because they had no antibiotics or aftercare or nutrition to help them heal.
“You feel you are in some ancient time, seeing things you don’t normally see because there are no longer medications there,” he said.
“The whole healthcare system has completely collapsed.”
Despite its capacity for some 400 to 500 patients, the European Hospital was treating up to 5,000, Mr Sultan said.
And some 30,000 refugees are also living in the hospital.
“You see tents on both sides of the corridor made from bed sheets with people living there.
“You are hardly able to walk there it’s so overcrowded. And the clinical areas are overcrowded. You turn around and there are people.
“It looks sometimes like a fish market. You can’t hear each other.
“And there was like a plague of bed sores. A lot of these were young patients. There were no beds so they were lying on the hard floor on a bedsheet. They had massive injuries but no painkillers so they couldn't move and they were getting pressure sores.
“There was not one patient I saw with complex wounds who did not have bed sores.
“And they were emaciated due to lack of food. They were not healing, they were not making progress because of the lack of humanity.”
Mr Sultan travelled to Gaza with the non-profit organisation FAJR Scientific, which aims to both treat patients and rebuild Gaza’s healthcare system.
He collapsed in the operating theatre after working for 24 hours, donating blood to a patient who needed an urgent transfusion and eating and drinking very little.
He required medical attention and said he was humbled by the care he received.
“They didn’t have anything to eat for themselves but if anyone had even a single date — probably their whole day’s meal — they brought it to me. I was so touched by their generosity and endurance.
“I learned so much from them.
“They have taught me is to be grateful for everything that you have.”
The streets of Gaza were “like Armageddon” he said with “destruction everywhere”.
Mr Sultan believes the death toll, currently estimated at almost 35,000, is likely to be much higher.
“From the destruction I’ve seen I think the death toll is easily well above 100,000. That’s my speculation. There is no manpower at the moment to count.
“But because Gaza is so densely populated there are very few houses, it’s all big apartment buildings full of people. And so many of those massive concrete structures have come down.
“Khan Younis was completely destroyed, a hollowed structure.
“The way I’ve seen human suffering and misery made me question why we are like that in 2024?
“Where has humanity gone? Why have we not learned from history?” Mr Sultan asked.
“My request to Mr [Benjamin] Netanyahu is to please have peace and dialogue. His name will be written by history.
“They should then let the mainstream media in so they can report it.”
Mr Sultan is also appealing for international universities and hospitals to take in Palestinian medical students and junior doctors who have been unable to finish their studies or training, with both medical schools “completely destroyed” and anyone with skills desperately needed on the healthcare frontlines.
“Their futures are at stake. I urge the international community to step up and get them into other prestigious institutes and let them complete their medical studies and then go back in and sustain the [medical] infrastructure [in Gaza].
“A lot of doctors have already been killed. If there are no medical students, there will be no future doctors to take over.”
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