Gaza Hospitals Fail Under Israeli Bombardment; Doctors Without Borders Describes Horrific Conditions
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
November 13, 2023
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/11/13 ... transcript
Transcript
Gaza’s two largest hospitals are under a complete siege by Israeli forces and no longer functioning. Palestinian health officials have also accused Israel of using snipers to shoot at people inside Al-Shifa Hospital, where thousands of displaced Palestinians have sought refuge. Israel has claimed Hamas runs a command center below the hospital, though this has been denied by hospital staff and Israel has not publicly released any evidence behind the claim. Dr. Fadel Naim of Al-Ahli al-Arabi Hospital says surgeons are forced to operate in hospital corridors with limited anesthetic supplies. “Unfortunately, we couldn’t help many of these patients. Many of them died because we couldn’t do anything for them.” We also hear from Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan, a pediatric intensive care physician with Doctors Without Borders who has worked in Gaza and the West Bank. She is a co-founder of the social media account Gaza Medic Voices. “Anyone who tries to leave the hospital is targeted,” says Haj-Hassan. “We have descended into a very dark era for humanity.”
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.
Gaza’s two largest hospitals, Al-Shifa and al-Quds, have stopped functioning as Gaza’s health system collapses under relentless Israeli bombardment and blockades. On Saturday, Al-Shifa Hospital ran out of fuel, forcing doctors to remove dozens of premature babies from incubators. Six premies have already died. Doctors are struggling to keep more than 30 other babies alive.
Palestinian health officials have accused Israel of using snipers to shoot at people inside the hospital complex, where thousands of displaced Palestinians have sought refuge. Israel has claimed Hamas runs a command center below the hospital. Hamas and medical officials at the hospital have denied the claim.
On Sunday, Dr. Mohammed Obeid, a surgeon with Doctors Without Borders, described the dire situation inside the hospital.
DR. MOHAMMED OBEID: The situation now is very bad. And we don’t have connection. There is no internet. Sometimes we have some [cellphone reception]. We’re on the fourth floor. And also, there’s a sniper who attacked four patients from — inside the hospital. One of them has a gunshot directly in his neck, and he has a quadriplegia. And the other one, he had a gunshot in the abdomen. And some of the people which actually go outside the hospital, they want to go to the south. They bomb them also. They bombed the families from Al-Shifa Hospital today in the morning. There is no electricity, actually. There is no water. There is no food. So our team is exhausted.
We have two neonate patients die, actually, because the incubator, it’s not working because there is no electricity. Also, we have the adult patient in the ICU; he died because the ventilator is shut down because there is no electricity. We can see, actually, the smoking — the smoke around the hospital. They hit everything around the hospital, and they hit the hospital many times.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Dr. Mohammed Obeid, a surgeon with MSF, Doctors Without Borders, inside the Al-Shifa Hospital. On Sunday, Democracy Now! reached another doctor in Gaza City, Dr. Fadel Naim.
DR. FADEL NAIM: We are at Al-Ahli al-Arabi Hospital, the Baptist Hospital, the only functioning hospital in Gaza City. All the injured people and other people, like people with high blood tension or diabetes mellitus or diarrhea or asthenia or children with dehydration, cancer patients, patients with kidney failure who need dialysis, pregnant women and other cases, are coming to our hospital because they have no other possibility to go to other hospitals. The other hospitals are surrounded by the Israeli tankers, like the biggest hospital in Gaza, Shifa Hospital, and al-Nasr Pediatric Hospital. Some of the [inaudible] hospitals are closed because of the shortage in fuel and equipment. Since yesterday, we received more than 300 or 400 injured people and tens of other people who had other health problems. We had to do some surgical interventions in the corridors and on the courtyard because of the shortage of anesthesia drugs.
Our biggest problem is the shortage in manpower. Because we are a small hospital, we are not prepared to receive such like — like these numbers of patients at one time. Many volunteers came to help us, but we need specialized doctors in different specialties, in general surgery, in neurosurgery, chest surgery, vascular surgery and gynecology and pediatric pediatricians. Unfortunately, we couldn’t help many of these patients. Some of them died because we couldn’t do anything for them.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Dr. Fadel Naim, speaking Sunday from Al-Ahli al-Arabi Hospital in Gaza City.
To talk more about the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, we’re joined by Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan. She’s a pediatric intensive care physician who works with the humanitarian aid organization Médecins Sans Frontières, MSF, or Doctors Without Borders. She’s in regular contact with health professionals in Gaza and previously worked as a medical trainer in Gaza and the West Bank. She’s the co-founder of the social media account Gaza Medic Voices, which shares firsthand accounts from healthcare professionals in Gaza. On Saturday, she took part in a vigil outside British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s office in London. She broke down while reading an urgent message from the director of Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza, Dr. Nidal Hadrous.
DR. TANYA HAJ-HASSAN: [reading] We, as medical staff, want to leave, but we cannot. We might not survive until the morning.
AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Haj-Hassan breaks down as she tries to read a statement from the doctor in Gaza. She sits down. She covers her eyes. Her colleagues, also in blue hospital gear, put their arms on her.
DR. TANYA HAJ-HASSAN: [reading] We might not survive 'til the morning. We don't want to be killed here just only because we remained committed to our patients and our medical profession. I am calling for help urgently. Please do whatever you can through your governments or the international — the ICRC, the Red Cross, to arrange a safe corridor for the medical staff. Please treat this as top urgent. This is the director of the major trauma hospital in Gaza.
I’m going to leave you with one more message: To bomb a hospital means to terrify sleeping patients, to break windows over their heads, to make the walls tip onto their bodies, to rip out ventilators and burn oxygen tanks, to ruin equipment that can help human millions of times.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan, pediatric intensive care physician who works with the humanitarian aid group Doctors Without Borders, reading an urgent message from the director of Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza, Dr. Nidal Hadrous.
Dr. Haj-Hassan, thank you so much for joining us. You must be, to say the least, beyond exhausted. You were reading that statement in London. I last saw you in Jordan, and now you’re in Toronto, Canada. Can you talk about the latest? That was Saturday. This is now two days later.
DR. TANYA HAJ-HASSAN: Yeah. Just to be clear, you know, this was a vigil with multiple healthcare providers present who have been working in the Gaza Strip for over a decade. And we’re all in tears. I mean, every day we feel like we’ve reached the worst. And I’m going to quote one of my colleagues in Gaza, a young female surgeon, who said, “Every day we think that we’ve reached the worst thing that could ever happen, and it’s impossible that the world will be silent to it, and it will definitely get better, and we’ve finally reached the end. And then the next day proves that there’s something even worse.” And I share that sentiment. We have descended into a very dark era for humanity.
Let me just paint a picture for you of the conditions, as far as I know them, right now at Al-Shifa Hospital. I’ve receiving updates up until about an hour and a half ago. It’s very difficult to receive updates. As you know, communication has been cut off, so they’re intermittent. There’s certain individuals who have intermittent connection.
Al-Shifa Hospital is the largest trauma hospital in Gaza. It is under complete siege. It has been come under direct attack by Israeli forces for over a week now. The medical staff, including Médecins Sans Frontières, MSF, staff, are physically in the hospital at the moment. There are patients there in critical condition, hundreds of patients. And there are thousands of internally displaced individuals who are still inside that hospital, completely under siege, surrounded by Israeli tanks. They have no access to food. They’re surviving on minimal dates and biscuits that are left in the hospital. They have no access to water. They describe being very thirsty. And, as you know, they have no access to electricity, after the fuel supply was cut off, the electricity supply was cut off, and, more recently, the solar panels were bombed. They describe over a hundred bodies lying on the ground decomposing, dead bodies that they cannot bury. This is after having to dig mass graves in the garden of the hospital. The morgues cannot be cooled to preserve the bodies. As you know, there’s no electricity. So they’re decomposing.
The intensive care unit was targeted twice in the last 24 hours. There are 28 patients there. Two of them have passed away over the course of the evening. These are the adult patients. They have no access to oxygen. Dialysis patients, who require electricity to run the dialysis machines because they have kidney failure, do not have access to those dialysis machines. I can describe to you in detail what death will look like for these patients. Toxins will develop in their bloodstream. They will become overloaded with fluid, because they cannot pee it out. They cannot pee the toxins out, either. They will feel very unwell. They will probably get very confused. They’ll have difficulty breathing. And eventually they’ll die. This is a slow, horrible, painful death — preventable painful death, like all the deaths in Gaza.
Anyone who moves inside the hospital is getting directly killed. Two nurses were killed by snipers in the last 24 hours. Anyone who tries to leave the hospital is targeted. You mentioned the 38 premature newborns — three of whom who’ve died — are currently outside of their incubators, at risk of hypothermia, without access to oxygen. And I’m not sure how they’re going to provide them with all the things they need, including food.
This is an entire hospital that’s completely cut off, and we’ve had very little to no news from the other hospitals in the north of Gaza. Last we heard, they’re completely surrounded, like Al-Shifa Hospital. And, you know, we’re in a situation where there has been a systematic attempt to destroy civilian Palestinian livelihood and existence in all of Gaza, not just the north. Thirty percent of the killed have been in the south of Gaza, which is supposed to be the safe zone. Humanitarian corridors, or so-called humanitarian corridors, are called the corridor of death by Gazans, because they get directly targeted as they’re trying to flee on these corridors.
You know, Doctors Without Borders — and I mentioned we’re really struggling to contact a lot of the staff. One of my colleagues who I know at Al-Shifa said, “We are sure we are alone now. No one hears us. We are alone.” MSF was established — one of the main principles of MSF’s establishment by journalists and doctors decades ago was to provide testimony — this concept of témoignage, which means bearing witness — to provide testimony, to bear witness on these sorts of atrocities, that we don’t — that are not exposed, and to relieve the suffering of those who experience them. And we’re in a situation where we can’t do either of those things. One of our MSF staff who is staying in Gaza City, but not physically in the hospital at the moment, said there are dead people on the streets. I’m going to read his quote: “There are dead people on the streets. We see people being shot at. We can see injured people. We can hear them crying for help. But we cannot do anything. It is too dangerous to go outside.” Ambulances cannot reach the wounded.
You mentioned Dr. Hammam Alloh earlier, who was on your program a couple days ago describing how he had refused to leave the hospital and desert his patients. I knew Dr. Hammam. He was a beacon of light. He’s a gift to the world of medicine and his patients. He was a brilliant nephrologist, was one of the most highly trained doctors in Gaza. He was transforming the care of patients with chronic renal disease, the same patients that I told you are now subject to a slow and horrifying death. He spent a decade learning how to serve his people. He also has a very young family. He was killed in his wife’s home along with his father —
AMY GOODMAN: His father, his father-in-law and his brother-in-law.
DR. TANYA HAJ-HASSAN: — [inaudible] wife, his young children, and the rest are under the rubble at the moment. And they’ve been calling out to the Red Cross to try and help evacuate, and the Red Cross cannot reach them, for all the reasons that I mentioned. You know, I can’t believe that I’m having to say this, but healthcare providers, healthcare facilities, civilians have to be protected. You know, he mentioned in his interview to you that —
AMY GOODMAN: We’re having a little trouble with Dr. Haj-Hassan’s Skype. We’re going to play that interview. Dr. Haj-Hassan, can you hear me? Well —
DR. TANYA HAJ-HASSAN: I can.
AMY GOODMAN: You’re breaking up a bit.
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“Beacon of Light”: Fellow Doctors Recall Dr. Hammam Alloh, Gaza Doctor Killed by Israeli Airstrike
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
November 13, 2023
https://www.democracynow.org/2023/11/13 ... transcript
Transcript
We speak with two physicians who knew Dr. Hammam Alloh, a Palestinian nephrologist at Gaza’s Al-Shifa Hospital who was killed Saturday in an Israeli airstrike. They recall him as a “committed physician, wonderful father” and “beacon of light.” He had refused to heed Israeli directives to evacuate in order to continue providing care to his patients. “He spent a decade learning how to serve his people,” says Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan with Doctors Without Borders. “He wanted his children to be able to see a day when they had a free, just, durable, free life in Palestine, without occupation,” says Dr. Ben Thomson, a fellow nephrologist who worked with Dr. Alloh.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to bring in another doctor into this conversation, as you talk about the doctor whose interview we are going to play in just a minute, Dr. Ben Thomson was also a friend and a colleague of Dr. Hammam Alloh. He’s a nephrologist in Toronto, where you are now, too.
Dr. Ben Thomson, can you also tell us about Dr. Hammam Alloh? We’re going to play the full interview in just a moment that we did with him just two weeks ago.
DR. BEN THOMSON: Thank you, Ms. Goodman.
I mean, Dr. Hammam Alloh, as my colleague from Médecins Sans Frontières said, was a incredible human being, a committed physician, wonderful father. When I was at his home in September in Gaza City, I was joking with him, because I said, “You’re such an optimist.” You know, he was absolutely convinced — he insisted that if the world knew what was happening in Gaza, that it would intervene and that it would end the suffering for people in Gaza.
Like so many doctors in Gaza over the last month, faced with horrible circumstances, he remained committed to his patients. He cared for them, despite everything that he faced. The very first interview he did, as he was speaking truth to the world about the horrors that he was experiencing in Gaza, his own home was bombed. Windows, the front door of his house blew off. He went to check on his children. He went to check on his father that lived with him. He put them in a room, and then he came back and finished the interview. And the very next day, he went to work. This was his level of commitment.
I am convinced that if he was here sitting and he was here talking to you, he would have been very clear what he wanted. You know, he was an optimist, yes, and he had good days and bad days over the last month. When we spoke every day, he would talk about how he was committed to developing education programs for today’s doctors and the doctors of tomorrow in Gaza. But he also had very difficult days, faced with the very difficult circumstances that he faced every day, seeing his colleagues being killed, working in hospitals with no water, no food, no electricity, knowing that his patients who required dialysis treatment three times a week to survive, knowing that they’d be dead within a week without electricity, all thousand of them throughout Gaza would be dead. Knowing that, he still went to work. And those good days where he talked to me about education, he also had bad days. And on those bad days, he would tell me — he was speaking of the horrors that he was seeing. He was experiencing war crimes. He was witnessing them. He would tell me he was experiencing a genocide of his own people. It was horrible.
You know, I think at this point politicians are embarrassing themselves by their inaction. He would have been very clear. He would have wanted — there’s things that he would have wanted that I can talk to you about. But, you know, I think we need to remember Dr. Hammam, like many physicians in Gaza, was incredibly committed to his patients —
AMY GOODMAN: How did he die, Dr. Thomson?
DR. BEN THOMSON: — a wonderful father, and he died too early.
AMY GOODMAN: How did he die?
DR. BEN THOMSON: He was hit in an airstrike. He was at his wife’s home. He was with his father, with his father-in-law and his brother-in-law. His wife and two children, who are 4 and 5 years old, were at his own home, so they survived. But while he was at his wife’s home, an Israeli airstrike on his home killed all of them in the home.
AMY GOODMAN: So, Dr. Thomson, if you can tell me about your own situation in Toronto? I mean, to say the least, that’s very different from Gaza. But you were suspended for a month after you and the hospital were threatened over your comments that you tweeted on X. Can you talk about this?
DR. BEN THOMSON: I think, like many people around the world, I have experienced bullying, harassment and other negative consequences to speaking out for Palestine. In my situation, I had death threats. I was suspended from the hospital. I had a difficult month. But the reality is, my worst day over the last month is nothing compared to — you know, the best day of anyone in the last month in Gaza is still worse than my worst day.
And the reality is, people like Dr. Hammam would want us to think about, you know: What do we need right now? Yes, I suffered death threats, but the reality is, Dr. Hammam was killed, and a couple hundred other healthcare professionals in Gaza have been killed. And it behooves us right now to think: What do we have to do?
We must have an immediate ceasefire. We must have rapid and unimpeded access to humanitarian aid. And, you know, speaking with Dr. Hammam at his house in September, he talked about the fact he wanted his children to be able to see a day when they had a free, just, durable, free life in Palestine without occupation. We spoke of this often. And I think it behooves us now, as an international community — yes, many of us have been threatened. The reality is much, much worse for our colleagues in Gaza. The reality is we absolutely need to have a ceasefire, humanitarian aid, and there must be a durable, peaceful, just solution for a free Palestine.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to bring Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan back into the conversation — we’re having a little trouble with your Skype — and ask you to respond to what Israel is saying, that they are attacking the hospital because Hamas has used it as — underneath it, at least, or all around it — it is not exactly clear — as command and control.
DR. TANYA HAJ-HASSAN: You know, I get asked this question all the time. I got asked this question in 2014. The same accusations were made in 2008, 2009, 2014, 2021. These aren’t new accusations. It’s also not new that those accusations have not been substantiated.
I have worked in these hospitals. I can tell you what they are, with certainty. They are healthcare facilities caring for patients with limited resources as a consequence of a 16-year siege and with healthcare professionals who are the most dedicated doctors, nurses, paramedics, pharmacists that I have met in my entire life. And Dr. Hammam Alloh is the perfect example of that, as are Dr. Maisara and every single doctor who has been killed, and nurse and paramedic and microbiologist. I mean, over 200 healthcare providers have been killed to date, and they have been screaming for international protection. So I can tell you that they are functioning health facilities caring for patients.
And regardless of whether accusations of military activity around those hospitals are substantiated, it is an international — it would be considered a war crime to target them if they are functioning as a healthcare facility, and they are. That, I am confident of. I am also confident that I have never personally seen any evidence of military activity in and around these hospitals. And that is the most that I can say to this.
And I want to — I think that the important thing to remember is, we keep getting sucked into these arguments where we’re justifying these preposterous justifications for the violation of international law. And instead of constantly trying to defend something that’s completely — to defend against something that’s completely preposterous, I think we need to refocus on what is clear. What is clear is over 11,000 Gazans have been killed to date. Almost 200 Palestinians in the West Bank have been killed. Healthcare facilities are directly targeted, with intent. Ambulances are directly targeted, with intent. The entire infrastructure of a civilian population, everything that is needed, that is indispensable to their survival, from food to water to medical facilities to their shelter — everything has been targeted, intentionally targeted and destroyed. That is what we should be focusing on. There are also, you know, almost 5,000 children who have been killed, that we know of, but we don’t have statistics from the last 48 hours because they have completely destroyed the ability to even expose these atrocities.
And, you know, the last message that Dr. Hammam Alloh had sent, just a few hours before he was killed, to one of my colleagues, he said, “Your shouting means a lot to us. Please keep it up.” And I hope what Dr. Ben Thomson, what myself, what every humanitarian doctor or provider or human out there who is screaming about these atrocities, we paint this horrific picture, and I hope it inspires your viewers, the politicians everywhere to get up and respond to this avalanche of suffering with an avalanche of solidarity and action, because this is not a world that I want to live in. This is not a world that my colleagues want to live in. And this is not a world that we want to raise the next generation of children in. We have museums all around the world that remind us that this is not what we want for humanity. And this is our opportunity to assert that.
AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Haj-Hassan, there is a new acronym that was coined in Gaza over the last few weeks: WCNSF — “wounded child, no surviving family.” Can you explain?
DR. TANYA HAJ-HASSAN: Yeah. I mean, over 1,000 families have been killed. They’ve had at least two members of their families killed in the last month. Many families are completely wiped out, because these are — I don’t know much about weapons, but I can tell you they are very violent weapons that wipe out entire multistory residential buildings where families are sheltering, in seconds. And you have had so many families wiped off of the civil registry. Sometimes a child survives. And not infrequently, one person in the family survives. And so, it was happening so frequently that they had to coin a term for it, and sometimes even writing it on the bodies of the patients. Sometimes they even just write the word “unknown,” because it’s a child with no surviving family to even identify the child.
And, you know, it’s not just WCNSF. That is the acronym that has been coined by the Gazan medics. But there’s also WMNSF, “wounded mother, no surviving family”; WFNSF, “wounded father, no surviving family.” These aren’t acronyms that are used, but they are realities on the ground.
AMY GOODMAN: Doctor —
DR. TANYA HAJ-HASSAN: One of the last messages — so, I just want [inaudible] —
AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan, I’m going to cut you off, but only so that we can hear this last interview that we did, the last interview with Hammam Alloh. I want to thank you so much for being with us, Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan, pediatric intensive care physician with Doctors Without Borders. And I want to thank Dr. Ben Thomson, a friend and colleague of Dr. Hammam Alloh, who, again, was killed this weekend in an airstrike. The nephrologist in Toronto, Dr. Ben Thomson, traveled to Gaza twice a year since 2013. His charity is called Keys of Health. We’re going to break and then come back to hear Dr. Hammam Alloh’s last words. Stay with us.
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“We’re Being Exterminated”: Hear One of Dr. Hammam Alloh’s Last Interviews from Gaza Before His Death
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow!
November 13, 2023
Transcript
We feature one of the final interviews with Palestinian doctor Hammam Alloh, who died Saturday when an Israeli artillery shell struck his wife’s home, killing him, his father, brother-in-law and father-in-law. On October 31, Democracy Now! spoke to Dr. Alloh about conditions at Al-Shifa Hospital, Gaza’s largest hospital, and his decision to continue working, as he called on people in the United States and the rest of the world to take action against Israel’s indiscriminate assault. When asked about why he refused to leave his patients, Dr. Alloh responded, “You think I went to medical school and for my postgraduate degrees for a total of 14 years so I think only about my life and not my patients?”
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman.
Nearly 200 medical workers have been reported killed in Gaza since October 7th. Over the weekend, Democracy Now! learned that Dr. Hammam Alloh was killed Saturday when an Israeli artillery shell struck his family home, killing him, his father, his brother-in-law and his father-in-law. Dr. Alloh was a kidney specialist, a nephrologist, who worked at Al-Shifa, the largest hospital in Gaza. He was 36 years old. He leaves behind his wife and two children, a 4- and a 5-year-old. Dr. Hammam Alloh spoke to Democracy Now! October 31 in one of his last interviews.
AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Hammam Alloh, you’ve said, “Every day, I see a fear in their eyes that I can’t do much about. It’s very painful. If you have kids, you know how horrible it is not to be able to comfort them, to ensure they are alright, to make them hope for anything beyond living one more day.” If you can talk about that in the hospital, which, as you said, is not just a hospital for sick people? Thousands are taking refuge at Al-Shifa and al-Quds and the other hospitals. And also, we’re talking to you as you just left Al-Shifa. How do you comfort your family? What’s happening to your family as you’re at the hospital?
DR. HAMMAM ALLOH: I tell them at least we still have a house with a door to close. But many thousand refugees, people like us, who used to live in dignity have no longer houses and no doors to close to protect them as they are surrounded by wastewater, by garbage. They don’t have a liquid, continuous supply of clean water to drink. Many of them have a lot of missing members of their families. They don’t know if they are alive or not. I tell them at least we still have a house to live in, but they don’t have. And surprisingly, my 4- and 5-year-old kids, they accept this as a comfort, as a better situation compared to those refugees living — they are living actually in hospitals, but it’s not like they are living inside the hospital departments. Many of them do not have enough space to go into hospital hallways, so they are living around the buildings and in the garden. So, yeah, surprisingly, my very young kids accept this.
AMY GOODMAN: The Israeli military has dropped thousands of pamphlets warning people where you are, in northern Gaza, to leave. Why don’t you go with your family south?
DR. HAMMAM ALLOH: And if I go, who treats my patients? We are not animals. We have the right to receive proper healthcare. So we can’t just leave.
AMY GOODMAN: The World Health Organization talked about this issue of telling doctors to leave their patients, choosing your own lives over your patients. Can you talk about that choice, since so many patients can’t leave — for example, babies in incubators?
DR. HAMMAM ALLOH: You think I went to medical school and for my postgraduate degrees for a total of 14 years so I think only about my life and not my patients? I’m asking you, Ma’am. Do you think this is the reason I went to med school, to think only about my life? This is not the reason why I became a doctor.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about what’s happening to the hospitals? Just in our headlines today, we talked about, and in the last few days, the attack on the Indonesia Hospital. The Turkish Hospital is the only cancer hospital?
DR. HAMMAM ALLOH: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the significance of these places, both as a sanctuary, thousands of people taking refuge, and for patients?
DR. HAMMAM ALLOH: Yeah. Indonesian Hospital is providing healthcare for over 400,000 citizens in the Gaza Strip. And this part of the Gaza Strip is being split from the rest of the Gaza Strip. If this hospital stops providing care, so we are exposing many thousand Palestinian souls to the dangers of disease and death.
Turkish Hospital, with its very modest capabilities even before war, was the only hospital providing care and medications for cancer patients from around the Gaza Strip. It was airstruck yesterday. I don’t know how many patients and healthcare professionals were wounded. And many patients are dying now because they are not safe with their families to go to receive care and to continue their chemotherapy.
Ministry of Health has declared two hours ago also that the electricity would be cut off from Al-Shifa Hospital, the largest hospital, representing 40% of the healthcare power in the Gaza Strip and providing services for many machine-dependent patients, like the ventilated patients and the hemodialysis patients. So, if electricity is cut out from this hospital, so we are directly deciding those patients are going to necessarily die. Ventilated patients will die in minutes. Dialysis patients will die in hours to days after stopping their hemodialysis. Many patients are now being treated with the modest supplies we have. Many diabetic patients are now being admitted to hospital because of their insulin is not being kept in the refrigerator, so it’s not working. We are out — we ran out of many medications, like antifungal medications. We have a patient who died earlier this week with mucormycosis. This is an invasive, ugly type of fungal infection that killed her because we had no amphotericin to offer her. So, my very simple answer to your question is that death is coming to so many people in the Gaza Strip, in hours to days, if this continues the same way it’s going on.
AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Alloh, the Middle East Eye reports on a baby who died, says, “His death certificate has been issued before his birth certificate.” A 1-day-old baby has been killed by Israeli bombing in Gaza. Israel, the military, the government, says that Al-Shifa, your hospital, is Hamas —
DR. HAMMAM ALLOH: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: — the site of Hamas command and control. Can you respond to that, Dr. Alloh?
DR. HAMMAM ALLOH: I’ve been working this hospital for over two years, and I never saw this. So, I’m no lawyer, I’m no attorney, but this is how I am simply replying. I never saw this for over two years. If this is true, I would see at least a clue.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to ask you about the shipments of aid coming in. Normally, in normal times — if there’s ever a normal time in Gaza — over 400 trucks a day. We’re talking about a trickle of trucks now, maybe a dozen, maybe eight in a day. Have you ever seen this aid arriving at the hospital? And can you talk about what you need right now?
DR. HAMMAM ALLOH: Well, that number you just mentioned that was allowed into Gaza Strip is actually — is actually what you were referring to. It is nothing compared to what we need, nothing compared to the shortage in supplies, machines and medications we are in need for. The only thing, came just as I was leaving the hospital today, was a carton of IV fluid bottles. This is the only thing I saw. And I don’t really know if this came through the aid trucks in the few couple of days, or that was from the stores of the Ministry of Health. In addition, I happened to ask about in the hospital administration, and what they mentioned that was all about the gloves and gauze. And this is not what we are actually only in need for. This is what maybe the least we care for, the least we are in need for. So this is, again, nothing compared to what we are in need for in terms of supplies and medications.
AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Dr. Hammam Alloh, your message at this point to the United States, where we’re based, and to the world?
DR. HAMMAM ALLOH: Actually, the message hasn’t changed since the beginning of this war. First, we need this war to end, because we are real humans. We are no animals. We have the right to live freely.
Second, if you were, and your citizens, to live under these circumstances, what would you do for them? This is what we exactly would like you to do for us as a superpower country, as the United States, because we are really as human as your U.S. citizens are.
We were expecting more — earlier, I mean, solutions for that humanitarian and healthcare catastrophes and the crises, but what we are seeing, mainly through trucks allowed into Gaza, is nothing compared to us. So, we are being exterminated. We are being massly eradicated. And you pretend to care for humanitarian and human rights, which is not what we are living now. To prove us wrong, please do something. Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Hammam Alloh, speaking to us from Gaza City, where he works at the largest hospital, Al-Shifa Hospital. Please be safe.
DR. HAMMAM ALLOH: I hope I will be. Let’s hope, both together, I will be. Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Hammam Alloh was speaking from Gaza on Democracy Now! on October 31st in one of his last interviews. He was killed Saturday when an Israeli artillery shell struck his wife’s home, killing him, his father, his father-in-law and his brother-in-law. Dr. Alloh was a kidney specialist who worked at Al-Shifa, the largest hospital in Gaza City. He was 36 years old. He leaves behind a wife and two children, a 4- and a 5-year-old. Nearly 200 medical workers have been reported killed in Gaza since October 7th.
And that does it for our show. To see all our interviews with doctors, with residents, with Israeli historians and scholars and peace activists, with Palestinian and Israeli peace activists and academics, human rights lawyers, go to democracynow.org.
Democracy Now! is produced with Renée Feltz, Mike Burke, Deena Guzder, Messiah Rhodes, Nermeen Shaikh, María Taracena, Tami Woronoff, Charina Nadura. I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks so much for joining us.