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The situation in the Gaza Strip has been calmer since Monday, March 3, 2008. At the height of the crisis, Médecins Sans Frontières ( MSF) still managed to make donations to health facilities and continue to assess medical needs. Our teams are prepared to treat new patients in the coming days.
To date, approximately 120 people have died and 360 have been wounded, including women and children. Victims are still being freed from the rubble of the destroyed buildings. Given the seriousness of their injuries, most patients must be hospitalised and the mortality rate is quite high. Twenty-five percent of the casualties were fatalities.
Seventy-five new patients are expected to enter our programs
Our clinics have reopened and post-operative care has resumed in Gaza and Khan Younis. Our goal is to care for discharged patients referred by the Shifa hospital’s surgery department (the first patient was referred on Tuesday) and by other health facilities. On Thursday, 6 March, our teams conducted evaluations at the Shifa, Kamal Edwan and Al Awda hospitals. Twenty-four patients will soon enter our post-operative care programs.
On Sunday, March 9, we will conduct evaluations in the Jabaliya area. Wounded patients may also be referred to us from that region. In the weeks ahead, up to 75 new patients could enter our programs. These projections do not include the many wounded persons referred in Egypt who will subsequently require post-operative care. To address this increased need, an additional mobile medical team will travel through the northern Gaza Strip. Teams will also be increased and shifts will be assigned in our clinics so that they can remain open longer, if necessary.
Mobile medical teams have resumed their home visits to patients who cannot travel. We have distributed large quantities of medical supplies (specifically drips) and medicines from our emergency inventory. After a new needs evaluation, we distributed dressing and suture supplies to emergency departments at the Shifa hospital and several others in the northern Gaza Strip. If the Shifa emergency department cannot cope with the volume of patients, we will also be able to relieve them and treat minor surgeries, sutures and other procedures.
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MSF continues to work on post-operative care and rehabilitation programs in the Gaza strip.
© Valerie Babize / MSF |
Gaza: The Situation Has Been Worsening For Years
The current humanitarian crisis in Gaza has been covered widely in the media and criticised by the international community and NGOs. MSF notes that this worsening is not new and results from a combination of political and economic factors, aggravated by the blockade.
Several months ago, our field teams observed that health conditions were continuing to deteriorate in the Occupied Territories. Duncan McLean, Head of Mission, noted that “the dual conflict—Israeli-Palestinian and inter-Palestinian—and the blockade of the Gaza Strip has serious consequences for the health system. Those consequences also affect our work.”
The situation involves years of violence associated with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; the economic embargo and its tightening, since January, particularly with respect to supplies of electricity and fuel; and last summer’s inter-Palestinian clash, when hospitals were targeted, staff forced to strike, humanitarian actors took sides and access to health care blocked. Together with the latest violence, these events have weakened the health system in the Occupied Territories.
While supply problems are not new, the most recent spikes of violence have heightened the pressure on weakened health facilities. Our teams are in regular contact with hospitals in the Gaza Strip and report that despite the situation, they continue to provide basic care. MSF has helped to address shortages in medical supplies and medicine through regular donations.
MSF has worked in the Palestinian Territories since 1988.
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