2023-12-26 08:02:02
DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Doctors gave Shaimaa Nabahin an impossible choice: lose her left leg or risk death.
The 22-year-old had been hospitalized in Gaza for almost a week, after partially cutting her ankle during an Israeli airstrike, when doctors told her she was suffering from blood poisoning. Nabahin decided to maximize her chances of survival and agreed to have her leg amputated 15 centimeters (6 inches) below the knee.
The decision upended the ambitious college student’s life, as it has for many others among the more than 54,500 war wounded who faced similar heartbreaking decisions.
“My whole life has changed,” said Nabahin, speaking from his bed at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah. “If I want to take a step or go somewhere, I need help.”
The World Health Organization (WHO) and the Health Ministry in Hamas-ruled Gaza say amputations have become common during the 12-week war between Israel and Hamas, but could not provide precise figures. . At the Deir al-Balah hospital, dozens of recent amputees are in various stages of treatment and recovery.
Experts believe that in some cases, limbs could have been saved with proper treatment. But after weeks of an intense Israeli air and ground offensive, only nine of Gaza’s 36 hospitals remain operational. They are overcrowded, offer limited treatments and lack basic equipment to perform surgeries. Many wounded are unable to reach remaining hospitals due to Israeli shelling and ground fighting.
Sean Casey, a WHO official who recently visited several hospitals in Gaza, said the severe lack of vascular surgeons — the first to respond to trauma injuries and the best positioned to save limbs — is increasing the likelihood of amputations.
But also in many cases, he said, the severe nature of the injuries means that some limbs cannot be saved and must be removed as soon as possible.
“People can die from infections they have because their extremities are infected,” Casey said at a news conference last week. “We saw septic patients.”
Israel declared war after Hamas militants stormed the border on October 7, killing about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking more than 240 hostages. Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas and secure the release of all hostages. More than 20,600 Palestinians have died in the fighting, around 70% of them women and children, according to Palestinian authorities, who do not differentiate between civilians and combatants among the dead.
Before the war, Gaza’s health system was already overwhelmed by years of conflict and a border blockade imposed by Israel and Egypt after Hamas began ruling the territory in 2007. In 2018 and 2019, thousands of people were injured by Israeli army fire in weekly protests against the blockade led by Hamas, and more than 120 of the wounded had limbs amputated.
Even then, amputees in Gaza had difficulty obtaining prosthetics to help them return to an active life.
Those who join the ranks of amputees now face almost impossible conditions. Due to the current war, 85% of the 2.3 million inhabitants are displaced and crowded in tents, schools converted into shelters or relatives’ homes. Water, food and other basic supplies are in short supply.
On November 13, when an Israeli airstrike hit the home of Nabahin’s neighbor in Bureij, an urban refugee camp in central Gaza, his ankle and the arteries in his leg were partially severed by a piece of cement that fell into his house due to the explosion of the house next door. She was the only one in her family who was injured, while several of her neighbors died, she said.
She was rushed to the nearby Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, where doctors managed to stitch her leg and stop the bleeding.
But after that, Nabahin said he received minimal treatment or care from doctors, who were caring for a growing number of seriously injured people with few medical supplies. Days later, her leg turned a dark color, she said.
“They discovered there was shrapnel that was poisoning my blood,” he said.
The amputation went well, but Nabahin said he is still in severe pain and cannot sleep without sedatives.
Jourdel Francois, an orthopedic surgeon with Doctors Without Borders, says the risk of post-operative infections now in Gaza is high. Francois, who worked at Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis in November, said hygiene was poor, mainly due to water shortages and general chaos in a hospital that is overwhelmed with patients and housing thousands of displaced civilians.
He recalled a young woman with crushed legs who urgently needed a double amputation, but they couldn’t schedule her for surgery that day due to the large number of other critical injuries. She died that same night, Francois said, probably from sepsis or blood poisoning from bacteria.
“Every day 50 (injured) people arrive, a decision has to be made,” he told The Associated Press by phone after leaving Gaza.
At Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, many of the new amputees struggle to understand how losing a limb has changed their lives. Nawal Jaber, 54, had both legs amputated after she was injured on November 22, when Israeli bombing hit her neighbor’s empty house and damaged her home in Bureij. Her grandson was killed and her husband and her son were injured, she said.
“I wish I could meet my children’s needs, (but) I can’t,” said the mother of eight, tears streaming down her face.
Before the conflict, Nabahin had begun his studies in international relations in Gaza and planned to travel to Germany to continue his studies.
He said his goal now is to get out of Gaza, “save what’s left of me, have a prosthesis and live my life normally.”
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Jeffery reported from London and Samy Magdy in Cairo.
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