With the Israeli regime restricting access to journalists in Gaza, medical professionals have emerged as crucial witnesses to the humanitarian crisis unfolding in the enclave.
The New York Times has surveyed 65 healthcare workers who have volunteered to work in Gaza’s embattled hospitals and medical facilities, a frequent target of Israeli raids and bombings since October last year.
Of those, 44 doctors, nurses, and paramedics reported witnessing a heartbreaking pattern of preteen children suffering from severe gunshot wounds, often to the head or chest.
“Nearly every day I was there, I saw a new young child who had been shot in the head or the chest, virtually all of whom went on to die. Thirteen in total,” said Dr. Sidhwa, a trauma and general surgeon who volunteered at the European Hospital in Khan Younis.
Dr. Mohamad Rassoul Abu-Nuwar, a general and bariatric surgeon from Pittsburgh, shared the same chilling experience from one night in the emergency department. “In the course of four hours, I saw six children between the ages of 5 and 12, all with single gunshot wounds to the skull.”
The healthcare workers also reported alarming levels of malnutrition among the population.
Dr. Ndal Farah, an anesthesiologist from Toledo, Ohio, highlighted the severity of the situation, stating, “Malnutrition was widespread. It was common to see patients reminiscent of Nazi concentration camps with skeletal features.”
United Nations experts and others have warned of dire food insecurity and widespread malnutrition faced by almost the entire population in Gaza, where access to food and basic healthcare has been severely restricted by Israel.
Additionally, 25 healthcare professionals polled by the Times reported that healthy newborns would often return to hospitals, only to succumb to dehydration, starvation, or infections due to their malnourished mothers’ inability to breastfeed, compounded by a lack of infant formula and clean water.
“Starved mothers would report to the I.C.U. begging for formula to feed their newborn children. Newborn babies only a few hours or days old would present to the hospital severely dehydrated, infected and hypothermic,” Loma Linda, a pediatric critical care doctor from California, recalled.
“Many babies died from these conditions which were 100 percent preventable deaths,” he added.
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