Gaza City, November 13 (RHC)-- Gaza’s two largest hospitals have stopped taking new patients due to Israeli bombardment and shortages of medicine and fuel amid reports of rising deaths among patients and medical staff.
Al-Shifa and Al-Quds, Gaza’s biggest and second-biggest hospitals, respectively, said on Sunday that they had suspended operations as the World Health Organisation called for an immediate ceasefire to prevent rising deaths.
Dr Nidal Abu Hadrous, a neurosurgeon working at Al-Shifa Hospital, said patients and staff were facing a “disastrous” situation with no electricity or water and no safe passage out. “This can’t last long. Urgent intervention to save the staff and the patients is required,” Abu Hadrous told Al Jazeera.
Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza also suspended operations after its main generator ran out of fuel, hospital director Ahmed al-Kahlout told Al Jazeera.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the situation at Al-Shifa Hospital was “dire and perilous.” “The world cannot stand silent while hospitals, which should be safe havens, are transformed into scenes of death, devastation, and despair,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a post on X, adding that Al-Shifa was “not functioning as a hospital anymore.”
Three nurses have been killed at Al-Shifa Hospital since Friday amid Israeli bombardment and clashes near the complex, the UN relief agency in the occupied Palestinian territory said in its latest update on Sunday.
Twelve patients, including two premature babies, have also died since the start of power outages, while critical infrastructure, including the cardiovascular facility and maternity ward, has been badly damaged, according to the UN agency.
Gaza’s health ministry has said that three premature newborns have died.
The WHO has said that 600-650 patients, 200-500 health workers and about 1,500 internally displaced people remain at the hospital with no safe passage out. The patients include 36 babies who are at risk of dying due to the lack of functional incubators, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-governed enclave.
