More than a week after air strikes on Gaza Strip began and following the first land incursion of Israeli forces, surgical services in the area are overwhelmed and surgeons specialised in vascular surgery are desperately needed in order to deal with the number of wounded. In Gaza City, the intensive care unit of Shifa referral hospital has reached the limits of its capacity. The conflict is preventing patients needing post operative medical care and health personnel from reaching clinics and hospitals.
A Palestinian woman sits on the rubble of her destroyed house after an Israeli air strike in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. December 30, 2008. Photo by REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa. Courtesy of www.alertnet.org.
Three international MSF volunteers (a field coordinator, a doctor and a nurse) arrived in Gaza Strip on Wednesday the 31st of December, to reinforce the 35 local staff members.
MSF is adapting its activities to reach people in need of medical help who are unable to leave their homes. Local MSF doctors, nurses and physiotherapists have taken medical supplies to their own neighbourhoods and are providing care and distributing medical material to meet the immediate needs of patients living in their vicinity. In response to a request from Shifa referral hospital, MSF is attempting to send a surgical team into Gaza Strip. MSF is also trying to send a mobile hospital unit with an operating theatre and an intensive care unit, and medical material for treating the wounded and supplying hospitals, in order to help them deal with the numerous emergencies they are facing.
The intensity of the bombing hasn’t allowed MSF to continue with post-operative care in the MSF clinic in Khan Younis in the south and this clinic has been closed since the beginning of the air raids. In Beit Lahia, the conflict has repeatedly forced our teams to interrupt paediatric work despite several attempts to share the workload of doctors in Kamel Edwan hospital. Finally, in Gaza City, hardly any patients have been able to get to the MSF clinic where our teams continue to provide post-operative and medical care.
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Since July 2007, MSF has been providing post-operative care and physiotherapy to hundreds of people wounded by fighting in the Gaza Strip. In March 2008 a pediatric clinic was opened in Gaza for children under 12 years of age. In Nablus, on the West Bank, as in Gaza, MSF provides psychological, medical, and social support to families affected by violence. The team is composed of 11 international volunteers and 108 local staff members. MSF also operates a psychological support program in the West Bank town of Hebron. MSF has been working in Gaza and the West Bank since 1989.