A couple of American volunteer doctors described NBC News a hospital barely coping in Gaza, with bodies extended by floors with blood while medical personnel struggled to treat hundreds of people who had been injured while trying to access humanitarian aid.
“We have children who are dead on the floor and we cannot move these patients only due to the large volume we receive,” said Ahmed Farhat, an emergency doctor from California, NBC News in a video message on Tuesday, talking about the situation in Nasser’s medical complex in the city of Khan Younis.
“We have patients who are intubated on the floor without sedation. We have patients who have chest tubes on the floor, patients who are bleeding,” Farhat added, who has just under two weeks in a medical mission administered by Rahma Worldwide based in Michigan, a charity founded in 2014 that operates the emergency response and humanitarian aid programs throughout the Middle East and Africa.
His comments echo those of other doctors who work in Gaza, who in recent interviews with NBC News have lamented the lack of food and medicines that allow them to enter the enclave, amid international outrage due to generalized hunger and deaths from malnutrition. Others have described the aid distribution points as death traps, since an increasing number of people has been killed or injured while looking for foods desperately necessary.
On Tuesday, three short videos taken by Ferhat in Nasser’s medical complex showed dozens of people waiting for treatment in hospital floors. Some had inserted tubes to help them breathe, others were motionless.
Citing hospital administration data, Farhat said in a text message on Wednesday that the Nasser complex received 453 patients within several hours on Tuesday, and 48 of them had died.
He added that his patients told him that they had been criticized by the Israeli forces while trying to collect help from two sites administered by the Humanitarian Foundation of Gaza, the United States and Israel, which has been involved in controversy since it replaced most of the United Nations Help operations in the United Nations in Gaza in Gaza.
In a statement to NBC News on Wednesday, the GHF, which operates four militarized food distribution sites throughout the enclave in areas where the Israeli army is active, said that the convoys of help belonging to the United Nations and other organizations in the past often passed near their locations and were regularly looted by large crowds.
However, he said that “there were no incidents in or near” his sites on Tuesday. A spokesman for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (Ocha) could not confirm whether his help convoy had been looted near the GHF sites.
NBC News has communicated with the Israeli army to comment on the victims at Nasser Hospital.
Ferhat said that other patients had told him that they had been dismissed in another incident near the southernmost city of Rafah de Gaza while looking for help from a United Nations aid convoy that was happening.
An Ocha spokesman had no detail about the specific event, but said such incidents are not uncommon.
Separately, the Ministry of Health in Gaza, administered by Hamas, said on Wednesday that 87 people had been killed and 570 injured in a series of incidents throughout the enclave on Tuesday.
Travis Melin, an Oregon anesthesiologist who is also voluntary at Nasser Hospital, said the number of patients on Tuesday had been “huge.” In a text message on Wednesday, he added that he had seen the largest number of victims in the hospital during his one -month mandate there.
“We are still doing emergency surgery in people who should have gone to or yesterday,” he said.
The “worst case of famine” takes place in the Gaza Strip under the assault of Israel, said the main body of the world in hunger last week. Meanwhile, most of its residents have been expelled from their homes and more than 61,000 dead, including thousands of children, according to local health officials. Israel launched its offensive in Gaza after the terrorist attacks led by Hamas on October 7, 2023, in which some 1,200 people were killed and around 250 hostages.
Almost 1,400 people have been killed and more than 4,000 wounds while looking for food, said Ocha of the United Nations in an update on Tuesday. “At least 859 people have been killed in GHF sites since the beginning of GHF operations,” he added.
