January 12th 2009
An interview with a doctor at Al Shifa Hospital, Gaza
Hatem Shurrab, an aid worker with Islamic Relief interviews Dr Haytham Dababish, head of the emergency department at Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza. See here for Hatem’s first report from Gaza
I sat with 35-year-old Doctor Haytham Dababish in one of the corridors of the Al Shifa hospital, as chaos ensued around us. Outside sat the wrecks of two ambulances, crowds of people many of them crying filled the entrance and the hallways, and doctors and nurses constantly hurried back and forth. As we began to talk a new patient came in with serious gun-shot injuries to his head.
“Today I can say it is calm,” Dr Dababish told me. “We don’t have that many injured people coming in compared to yesterday. Then every minute a new patient would arrive, a lot of them critical.”
I am shocked by his assessment of what is ‘calm.’ But Dr Dababish is the Head of the Emergency Department at Al Shifa, the main hospital in Gaza where many of those injured in the conflict are being taken, so I guess he has grown accustomed to the scenes that surround us. He has been working at the hospital non-stop since the fighting started 17 days ago, and told me that he only leaves it for two hours every two days to check on his family.
“Yesterday, our staff worked for 24 hours without stopping,” he said. “We didn’t have time for even a few minutes break.”
Since the conflict started more than 4,050 people in Gaza have been injured, including 1,400 children. The hospitals simply aren’t equipped to deal with this level of demand for their services and throughout Gaza hospital corridors, wards and morgues are full of the dead and dying. “The emergency department at Al Shifa has 11 beds and two stand-by beds,” Dr Dababish explained, “On a normal day before this started, we received around ten cases a day. Now we receive 50 patients all at once. Unfortunately this means we have no choice but to treat the injured on the floor.”
“Treating patients under such conditions is very risky,” Dr Dababish told me. “Much of the equipment here is old and in urgent need of repair. For example, the ventilator for one of the intensive care beds is not working so a nurse has to use an ambo bag instead. Unfortunately it has happened many times that people have died because the hospital did not have the capacity to treat them properly.”
Thankfully some medical aid has now entered Gaza through the border crossings including equipment and ambulances brought in by Islamic Relief. The challenge now is to get it to the hospitals that need it.
As well as being under immense strain to provide treatment to all those who need it, Dr Dababish and his team are also struggling with the severity and brutality of the injuries people have sustained. “The first day of the assault was the hardest day in the history of Palestine,” said Dr Dababish. “Hundreds of casualties arrived at the emergency department. Bodies were put on the floor right here where we are sitting, some were dead and some were still alive. Their injuries were horrific.”
“Many people are arriving with amputations and it is difficult to stop their bleeding. The weapons that are being used are causing so much damage, especially to the internal organs and the chest. I would say that half of those who come to the hospital have critical injuries.”
“Our main priority is to ensure the person is breathing, then we have a chance of saving their life,” Dr Dababish told me. “We are treating children, women, old people and young men. All of them are very heavily injured.”
While the demand for emergency services has increased, other services are severely disrupted. According to the World Health Organisation there has been a 90 per cent reduction in the number of visits to primary health centres and around 70 per cent of chronically ill patients have stopped receiving their treatment, largely because it is too dangerous to venture outside. This means that the death toll could rise even further in the coming days and weeks.
Gaza’s paediatric hospital is reporting that parents are unable to take their sick children in for treatment. There are also grave concerns for pregnant women who are unable to travel to hospital for ante-natal appointments or to give birth. But the sad truth is, even if they did make it to a hospital there would be no beds available for them.
After 17 days of constant violence and fear, the whole population of Gaza, myself included, is exhausted and traumatised. Listening to and watching the tragic scenes at Al Shifa I cannot imagine what it must be like for Dr Dababish and his colleagues. “We are prepared to work under these conditions for two or three days,” he explained, “but this has been going on day after day for over two weeks. We are all shocked and tired and all I want to do is see my children.”
Hatem Shurrab
Islamic Relief
