Healthcare under attack
Salma was being treated at Al-Aqsa. Like the few other hospitals still partially functioning in Gaza, it can only provide trauma care. Health facilities have faced attacks, evacuation orders, or been starved of supplies, clean water and electricity: I can barely describe the destruction of healthcare I have witnessed.
Many hospitals and basic health centres have been forced to close; services like maternity care or chronic conditions essentially no longer exist.
So, are the people of Gaza no longer sick? Is there no more appendicitis? No asthma or gastro-enteritis? The truth is, that in overcrowded shelters, without food and water, lacking the most basic hygiene conditions, people are sicker than before, but they no longer have access to healthcare.
In mid-November, MSF started supporting the Shohada Health Centre, the biggest provider of general healthcare in Khan Younis. The needs were huge. After just one week, we had already provided outpatient consultations for more than 600 people, half of them under the age of five.
They had respiratory infections, skin diseases or diarrhoea, all of which can cause severe complications, especially in young children. All are a direct consequence of their dire living conditions.
Fonte original msf.org
