MSF Reports Gaza Medical Services Overwhelmed

Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is reporting that the surgical services in Gaza are in need of surgeons who are specialized in vascular surgery.

The surgical services in Gaza are overwhelmed and are in need of surgeons specialized in vascular surgery in order to deal with the increasing number of wounded people. This critical shortage has happened more than one week after air strikes began on the Gaza Strip, and following the beginning of a land incursion by Israeli forces, The intensive care unit at Shifa Hospital, in Gaza City, has reached its capacity. The situation means patients needing post-operative follow up care—and health personnel are unable to get it and cannot reach health structures. There are 38 local MSF staff on the ground including three expatriate Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) staff; a field coordinator, a doctor, and a nurse.The three arrived in Gaza on December 31 to reinforce the local MSF team. The fighting is so intense the MSF cannot continue providing post-operative care in the MSF clinic in Khan Younis in the south; the clinic has been closed since the beginning of the air raids and is now no longer accessible from the north because the Gaza Strip has been cut in two. MSF teams, in the northern village of Beit Lahia, have been repeatedly forced to interrupt pediatric care activities despite several attempts to carry out consultations and relieve the workload of doctors at Kamel Edwan Hospital. Since the land incursion on the night of the January 3, the intense violence has led MSF to suspend its intervention in this northern area of the Gaza Strip. Hardly any patients, in Gaza City, have been able to access the MSF clinic, which provides post-operative and medical follow up for wounded people who are referred from Shifa Hospital. MSF is adapting its activities in order to reach people in need of medical help who are unable to leave their homes due to the insecurity. Local MSF doctors, nurses, and physiotherapists have taken medical supplies to their own neighbourhoods and are providing care and distributing medical material to meet the immediate needs of patients living in their vicinity. MSF,in response to a request from Shifa Hospital, is attempting to send a surgical team into Gaza and is trying to send a mobile hospital unit with an operating theater and an intensive care unit. The organization is also trying to send medical materials to hospitals to help them deal with the numerous emergencies and patients they are receiving.