2023-11-19 01:28:49
The World Health Organization (WHO) announced that it had carried out a mission on Saturday to the al-Chifa hospital in Gaza, occupied by the Israeli army, and was working on an evacuation plan for the establishment it described as a “death zone”.
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According to the WHO, whose experts spent an hour inside the immense hospital complex, it still housed 25 caregivers and 291 patients on Saturday, including 32 babies in critical condition, 22 patients on dialysis and two in intensive care.
Mission members described the hospital as a “death zone” where the situation is “desperate,” the WHO reported in a statement.
“WHO and partners are urgently developing plans for the immediate evacuation of remaining patients, staff and their families,” the organization added.
“The team saw a hospital that was no longer able to function: no water, no food, no electricity, no fuel, medical supplies exhausted,” wrote X ( ex-Twitter) WHO Secretary General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.
“Given this deplorable situation and the condition of many patients, including babies, healthcare staff have requested help to evacuate patients who can no longer receive vital care on site,” he said. he adds.
In its statement, the WHO reports that the vast majority of patients still in hospital suffer from complex fractures and amputations, burns, chest and abdominal trauma, and that 29 patients suffer from serious spinal injuries. and are unable to move without medical assistance. Many injured people also suffer from severe infections, due to the lack of antibiotics and poor hygiene conditions.
The WHO announced that several missions will be organized in the coming days to urgently evacuate remaining patients to the Nasser Hospital and the European Hospital in Gaza, even though the latter are “already operating beyond their capacity.”
According to the Israeli army, which launched a raid on al-Chifa hospital on Wednesday morning, the latter houses a Hamas hideout installed in particular in a network of tunnels. The Islamist movement denies it.
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