OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, (PIC)
The World Health Organization (WHO) has said that northern Gaza has been left without a functional hospital due to a lack of fuel, staff and supplies.
“There are actually no functional hospitals left in the north,” Richard Peeperkorn, WHO representative in the West Bank and Gaza, told reporters via video link from Occupied Jerusalem on Thursday.
“Al-Ahli (Hospital) was the last one, but it is now minimally functional.”
“Our staff are running out of words to describe the beyond catastrophic situation facing remaining patients and health workers,” Peeperkorn said.
“Now, Al-Ahli is a shell of a hospital,” he said, adding that it was the only hospital where injured people could get surgery in northern Gaza until two days ago.
“But there are no operating theatres anymore due to the lack of fuel, power, medical supplies and health workers, including surgeons and other specialists,” he said. “It has completely stopped functioning and is only operating as a hospice currently, with no or very little care services provided.”
The WHO official said that Al-Ahli Hospital is in “utter chaos, completely congested and a disaster zone.”
He noted that only nine out of 36 health facilities are partly functional in the whole of the Gaza Strip, but all of them are in the south.
In a related context, the health ministry in Gaza said on Thursday that hundreds of wounded civilians had died because of the failure to provide them with medical treatment at Al-Shifa Hospital.
Spokesman for the ministry Ashraf al-Qudra stated that Al-Shifa Hospital lacks the medical services needed to treat wounded citizens, adding that all the hospital in Gaza City and northern Gaza “have become out of service.”
