Young Cancer Patients from Gaza are inside the desperate effort to evacuate
Israel’s Al-Ratisi Hospital, the Largest Medical Facility in Gaza, as Attacked by Hamas, Revisited
TEL AVIV, Israel — Gaza’s largest hospital reports that it has buried more than 100 people in a mass grave, as it says bodies decompose in its courtyard and babies are dying because their incubators have no power.
The conditions at Al-Shifa Hospital, and other medical facilities in Gaza, are worsening to new unimaginable levels, according to health officials and humanitarian groups on the ground.
“Our staff is saying there is no electricity,” said Paul Caney, the group’s emergency coordinator. “People are staying in the corridors because of sniper fire near the windows and that they cannot move any of the patients to ambulances.”
The only medical center in Gaza with a cancer ward for children was forced to close on Friday because of fighting. Even before the hospital closed, critically ill patients were being sent home through violent streets or transferred to Al-Shifa, a nearby hospital that is under siege by Israeli forces.
More than 11, 200 Palestinians in Gaza have died, according to the Ministry of Health in Gaza. The death toll is rising as Israel continues to blockade the area in response to the attacks by Hamas. The health officials said there are challenges updating the tally for the third day in a row due to service and communication disruptions.
The continued fighting has also meant other injured patients and displaced Palestinians who fear evacuating to the south are crowded into hospitals in the north for shelter.
Israel says Hamas is operating in some hospitals in Gaza because they’re under military facilities.
On Monday, the Israeli military released a video that claims to show the Hamas tunnels under Al-rantisi Hospital. Israeli military officials said they found weapons under the hospital, which is evidence that Hamas is operating there.
The basement of the hospital was included in the design, said Gaza health officials. It has become a shelter for people who have lost their homes in the bombing.
The Plight of Children in Gaza: A Memoir of Two Weeks at a Damned, Iron-Poor Hospital
The youngest is not even a year old; the oldest is 14. Doctors said that tumors could kill all of them if not treated.
Most of the children with cancer were being treated at Al-Rantisi, which had 35 inpatient pediatric cancer patients as of two weeks ago, Dr. Gaoud said. But as shells hit the hospital’s water tanks and power system over the past week, it began to empty out.
Families lost their cell service when their children were allowed to go to Egypt, as well as missed specific days when permission to cross into Egypt was granted, according to aid workers and doctors. Some waited for hours for ambulances that never made it to a meeting point.
One family arrived at the border only to discover that their child had been approved to cross, but the parent’s name had been inexplicably left off the list.
The plight of children in Gaza is a reflection of the war that started just over a month ago. Israel’s retaliation has killed more than 11,000 people, including more than 4,500 children, according to health officials in Gaza.
On Friday, Dr. Gaoud said that Al-Rantisi was forced to close due to staff members dragging patients out of their beds and waiting for ambulances. The map provided by Israeli soldiers was a safe route through the fighting.
The organizations created a registry of children to be moved, with phone numbers for their relatives. St. Jude’s also promised to organize their transport into Egypt and ensure their medical care.
It wasn’t easy to add the names of the children to the list of people approved to cross the border into Egypt. There were no evacuated over the course of two weeks.
