MSF doctor says Gaza war like no other

Cairo, Egypt – AFP

A Doctors Without Borders (MSF) medic on Friday described unparallelled conditions in the Gaza Strip following a visit to the besieged territory in which he witnessed oversaturated hospitals and ever-closer bombardment.

Enrico Vallaperta left Gaza after spending several weeks in the war-torn Palestinian territory for charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF), but recalled the minimal supplies and large number of child casualties.

It’s “a context that no one saw before”, said the war medic who was deployed to Gaza during the 2021 war, at a press conference in Cairo a day after leaving the Strip.

More than 100 days of Israeli bombardments have left at least 24,762 people dead — three-quarters of them women and children — and 62,108 injured, according to the territory’s health ministry.

“If you compare to Ukraine, after a short time, women and kids were sent to safer areas. In Gaza, they can’t,” said Vallaperta, describing having to treat many children.

“Gaza now is a place that is destroyed. And what is not destroyed is full of people,” he said.

The World Health Organization (WHO) says only 15 of the 36 hospitals in the Gaza Strip are still functioning, partially, for Gaza’s 2.4 million residents.

“We use the minimum medication so that we can manage our supplies,” Vallaperta said.

Israel imposed a siege on Gaza in the wake of the October 7 attacks that resulted in about 1,140 deaths, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

Food, fuel and medicine have been blocked, with only small amounts of humanitarian aid trickling into the territory that had already been blockaded for 17 years.

“What we are doing is almost nothing given the needs. Our impact is very low, it is a drop in the ocean,” said Vallaperta.

The doctor said he had to make the difficult decision to evacuate his team from the Al-Aqsa hospital in central Gaza, because “they bombed 150 meters away from the hospital”.

Three days after they left, “a nearby building was bombed and partially collapsed on the hospital,” he said.

Helen Ottens-Patterson, MSF’s emergency coordinator in Cairo, said the charity has only been able to transport 107 tonnes of medical assistance so far.

“We would like to scale up, (but) there is a lack of humanitarian access,” she said, noting in recent weeks “a slower rhythm on the aid entering”, which must be inspected at Israeli terminals.

She also called for an “end of the attacks on health infrastructures”.

Vallaperta meanwhile warned “the situation is getting worse day after day, access to food is harder, access to water is harder”.

“We need a ceasefire now,” said the medic.