To date, UK-Med has provided medical treatment and life-saving surgery for over 140,000 people in Gaza, making us one of the largest humanitarian health actors present. Through our two field hospitals and support for the emergency department at Nasser Hospital, we are seeing 1,300 patients a day who would otherwise have little or no access to health services due to the ongoing conflict. To maintain this enormous operation, we employ more than 300 national staff and have around 15-20 international medics in Gaza at any given time.
More than 40,000 people have now been killed in Gaza since 7 October, with this number expected to rise due to the reported missing under the rubble, caused by the destruction of buildings and homes. The number of patients we are seeing increases each month as more and more people are in desperate need of help, with new casualties every day. In August alone we treated over 40,000 people, 40% of whom were children.
With more than 9 months of relentless conflict the situation in Gaza is desperate. Supplies take weeks to arrive and must run the gauntlet through an active conflict zone to reach their destination. Delivering at scale is a challenge and more support is urgently needed to sustain UK-Med’s operation and to restore hospitals to functionality.
Fernanda Vega, former Medical Coordinator with UK-Med on the ground in Gaza, explained:
“We are still struggling to get enough medication. With antibiotics, the issue is that we get only one or two kinds of them, so treatment must be adapted to what is available instead of being able to treat patients with the optimal antibiotics. If these problems continue, there will be serious negative consequences for people in Gaza, particularly as the risk of infectious diseases remains high.”
The health infrastructure in Gaza is crumbling. According to the World Health Organisation current facilities are running at 44% and only partly functional. UK-Med’s field hospitals are essential in providing life-saving health care to thousands of people. To date, around 1.9 million people – 89% of the Gaza Strip – has come under evacuation orders since 7 October. Many of them now live in hastily constructed makeshift tents amidst heaps of waste and rubble. This overcrowding, lack of proper shelter infrastructure, poor water, sanitation and hygiene conditions has a grave impact on public health, with many forced to live close to solid waste dumping sites and open sewage areas.
Patients are coming to us for a variety of reasons, both directly and indirectly caused by the conflict. Having a highly skilled medical team and a field hospital in Al Mawasi equipped with a fully functional operating theatre we have now performed over 1,300 surgeries as well as treated over 58,000 emergency department patients.
Due to the abysmal living conditions Gazans are forced to endure many people are suffering from acute illnesses and infections and are in desperate need of primary health care. The complete devastation of waste and sanitation infrastructure in the Gaza Strip and the concentration of people into the “safe zone” in Al Mawasi (the area in the immediate vicinity of UK-Med’s largest field hospital), has created a breeding ground for infectious diseases. UK-Med has now seen over 61,000 primary health care patients, many of them having presented with respiratory tract infections, scabies, Hepatitis A and diarrhoea.
Dr Alexis Mackleworth, a paediatrician recently returned from Gaza explained:
“We also saw a lot of Hepatitis A in both children and adults. Again, that is a virus transmitted through contaminated food or water and faecal oral routes. So, people being unable to clean their food, and clean their hands properly, can result in lots of cases of Hepatitis A.”
It is not only physical ailments – the high stress environment and traumatic events people are witnessing everyday are having a huge impact on the mental wellbeing of everyone, and this is only expected to worsen and cause damaging long-term conditions.
With access in and out of Gaza becoming increasingly difficult, we are at a constant threat of resource shortages, including fuel and medical supplies. With healthcare services overwhelmed it is vital UK-Med are able to provide support for the thousands in desperate need of help.
