Gaza: Why? The question my 11 year old son asks me, said Dr Al Sahbani
August 26, 2011 - Today I visited Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, and interviewed Dr Ayman Al-Sahbani, Director of Emergency Department. The situation is dire, from any perspective. The last week of Israeli attacks have seen patient numbers in the emergency department more than double in Al Shifa hospital alone, to 700 in 24 hours. Supplies of essentials such as sutures have almost run out, with catgut having to be used inside and out – and only one size available at that (40mm). There were a few packs of sterile gauze left, leaving them reliant on manual packs, and but a handful of sterile gloves. Al Shifa is the largest hospital in the Gaza Strip, and probably has more supplies than anyone else, so imagine the situation in the others, he commented....
Gaza: Why? The question my 11 year old son asks me, said Dr Al Sahbani
By Julie Webb-Pullman In Gaza
August 26, 2011
Today I visited Al Shifa Hospital in
Gaza City, and interviewed Dr Ayman Al-Sahbani, Director of
Emergency Department.
The situation is dire, from any
perspective. The last week of Israeli attacks have seen
patient numbers in the emergency department more than double
in Al Shifa hospital alone, to 700 in 24 hours.
Supplies of
essentials such as sutures have almost run out, with catgut
having to be used inside and out – and only one size
available at that (40mm). There were a few packs of sterile
gauze left, leaving them reliant on manual packs, and but a
handful of sterile gloves. Al Shifa is the largest hospital
in the Gaza Strip, and probably has more supplies than
anyone else, so imagine the situation in the others, he
commented.
Dr Ayman
Al-Sahbani describes how medical supplies are running out at
his critical care unit in Gaza.
Dr Ayman
came close to tears several times as he showed me around the
emergency department and the critical care unit.
"We
want the world to know what is happening here in Gaza," he
said. "We need to know what these weapons are. We have
twenty children in here, with injuries we have never
encountered before, even in Operation Cast Lead when we
first saw phosphorous burns. These weapons are even worse,
they cause terrible burns, they sever feet and legs, and
hands, they fill the bodies with hundreds of small pieces of
metal."
Clinicians describe how
victims are presenting with injuries from unknown new
weapons.
Dr Ayman pulled back a
curtain, "Here is a 13 year old boy who was playing
football with his friends when they were struck by an
Israeli rocket, both his hands were blown off and his legs
badly injured as well, and he has terrible burns, and
shrapnel all over his body."
"When they brought him
in I thought he was dead, and then he cried out, "Ay
mama" so we operated, several operations, and five days
later he is still alive. Will he ever play football again? I
don’t know. Most of the victims have been women and
children, they are civilians. The question my 11 year old
son asks me is why? Why does Israel attack us like this?
What can I answer?"
Clinicians allow Julie
Webb-Pullman to report on the suffering experienced by the
civilian victims of the Israel/Palestine conflict as they
are treated at the Critical Care Unit at Al Shifa Hospital,
Gaza.
Some parents in the critical care
unit asked that I not take pictures of their children, so
the true horror of the clinical reality remains burned only
in the minds of their families, and the hospital staff.
Like most of them, Dr Ayman has been working almost non-stop
since the attacks began last Thursday night. He has seen
his own children for only one hour in three days, but the
images of the children he has treated in the past week leave
little room for anything else. "They arrive in pieces,
some burned beyond recognition. We are doctors, we are
humans, we just want to live our lives freely, we want to do
our jobs properly, we want our children to grow up in
freedom, like in other countries. In other countries
children can play football, they can swim in pools, but her
in Gaza when children play football, when they swim or play
they get bombed, killed, and amputated. What kind of life is
that for a child?"
Looking around the critical care
unit, at the mutilated limbs, the burns, the small bodies
peppered with metal, the bruised and battered faces, and the
exhausted staff working to the rhythm of ventilators,
beeping monitors, and the constant slapping of a young
man’s face to keep him responsive, I can understand the
anguish of the doctors and nurses working under such
difficult conditions to save the lives of the young victims
of Israel’s latest outrage.
>Fadi
Hamada makes a plea for assistance from New Zealand and the
international community. And Ayman Al-Sahbani describes why
he agreed to show Julie Webb-Pullman through the critical
care unit in Gaza.
And some more
"Why?"s occur to me. Why is Israel’s security
considered more important than that of these Gazan chiidren?
Why is the international community permitting the use of
such weapons against civilian populations? And why is it
standing by and doing nothing, while civilians are once
again being slaughtered by Israel in a blatant act of
collective punishment for the Eilat crimes they did not even
commit?
Julie Webb-Pullman (click to view previous
articles) is a New Zealand based freelance writer who
has reported for Scoop since 2003. She recently managed to
get into Gaza during a brief period when the Rafah Gate was
open.
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