Dr. Mohammed Ghneim has not left his hospital in Gaza City in four weeks. He can\u2019t remember the last time he slept or ate, and his blue scrubs are stained in the blood of patients who\u2019ve died in his arms. <\/p>\n
His voice cracks under the weight of the horrors he\u2019s seen: fetuses pulled from the wombs of dying mothers, children with crushed lungs struggling to breathe, and his own colleagues \u2013 doctors, nurses and EMTs \u2013 transported to the hospital morgue in body bags. <\/p>\n
Ghneim is an emergency room doctor at Dar Al-Shifa, also known as Al-Shifa Hospital or Shifa, and is Arabic for \u201chouse of healing.\u201d But at this hospital \u2013 the largest medical complex in Gaza \u2013 there\u2019s far too much death. <\/p>\n
Shifa is running dangerously low on clean water, medicine, supplies\u00a0and fuel.\u00a0Meanwhile, thousands of Palestinians, injured or displaced by Israel\u2019s war against Hamas, continue to pack its wards, seeking shelter from the seemingly endless barrage of airstrikes. <\/p>\n
Israeli forces on Saturday surrounded Shifa in all directions, according to Dr. Munir Al-Bursh, director-general of the Hamas-controlled health ministry in Gaza.\u00a0The Israel Defense Forces denied that the hospital is under siege. <\/p>\n
An Israeli airstrike destroyed the hospital\u2019s generator, Al-Bursh said, cutting electricity to the building, including life-saving equipment used by 39 infants in neonatal care. Three infants have already died, he added. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe are trained to deal with mass casualties, but not like this,\u201d Ghneim, 28, said. \u201cWe have no anesthesia to treat patients with severe pain, patients with shrapnel in their head or abdomen, people whose arms or legs have been amputated.\u201d <\/p>\n
Alarming scenes from inside Shifa, and other hospitals across Gaza, have sparked international calls for a ceasefire and more aid to be allowed to enter the territory, home to some 2 million Palestinians, currently closed off to the world by Israel and Egypt. <\/p>\n
Nonprofit medical groups across the United States are mobilizing to raise funds and ship medicine and supplies to failing hospitals before it\u2019s too late. But with the situation in Gaza spiraling and few diplomatic or humanitarian solutions in sight, many worry the delay will result in more deaths. <\/p>\n
\u201cI want to say to the world, this is a humanitarian crisis, this is a genocide,\u201d Ghneim pleaded from his crowded emergency room. \u201cPlease stop this.\u201d <\/p>\n
More than 7,000 miles away, in Houston, Mosab Nasser is making travel plans to visit communities where he can spread awareness about the situation in Gaza and raise funds for struggling hospitals. <\/p>\n
The proud Texan, born and raised in Gaza, says it\u2019s all he\u2019s been doing since October 7, when Israel declared war following a brazen attack by Hamas that killed around 1,200 people and took more than 230 others hostage, according to Israeli authorities. <\/p>\n
Israel responded by imposing a siege and launching devastating airstrikes across Gaza, which Hamas governs. Israel says its goal is to destroy the militant group and return the hostages, but it is the Palestinian people living there who are bearing the brunt of the attacks. <\/p>\n
The airstrikes have killed at least 11,025 Palestinians, including 4,506 children, and wounded more than 27,000 others so far, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Ramallah, which draws its figures from sources in Hamas-run Gaza. <\/p>\n
Nasser says three of his relatives \u2013 all young children, including one who was only 8 months old \u2013 were killed when Israeli airstrikes caused their home to collapse, but he has no time to grieve. <\/p>\n
As CEO of the nonprofit medical group\u00a0FAJR Scientific, he is obligated to find a way to deliver aid and other resources to hospitals in need. <\/p>\n
FAJR Scientific\u2019s goal is to raise enough money to fill five 40-foot containers with medical supplies, surgical tools and sterile instruments, and ship them to Gaza, Nasser says. <\/p>\n
\u201cDoctors in Gaza don\u2019t get to go home. It\u2019s traumatic for them,\u201d Nasser said. \u201cThey are exhausted. Their bodies are physically at the hospital, but their minds are with their families trying to check on them.\u201d <\/p>\n
In some cases, Nasser says, medical workers have discovered their own loved ones among the injured or dead, compounding the fears and anxieties they already experience. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s not the first time FAJR Scientific has supported Gaza\u2019s medical community. The group has led several surgical missions to Gaza and trained nearly 100 Palestinian medical workers on the ground, Nasser says. In August, they provided more than $4 million in medical supplies to hospitals across the territory. <\/p>\n
The\u00a0Palestinian American Medical Association\u00a0(PAMA), another US-based nonprofit, is also leading efforts to assist health care workers in Gaza. <\/p>\n
They will use the money to purchase critical medicine and supplies, including anesthetics, antibiotics and other medications to fill containers that will be sent to Gaza. The group also has more than 1,000 health-care professionals on standby to enter the enclave as soon as Israel and Egypt allow entry to humanitarian workers, Musleh says. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re desperate to send help,\u201d the Palestinian American doctor from Dayton, Ohio, said. \u201cIt\u2019s a catastrophic situation. \u2026 There\u2019s 10 times more patients than what the hospitals can take care of and they\u2019re all coming with serious life-threatening injuries that need immediate attention, and a lot of people die because of that.\u201d <\/p>\n
FAJR Scientific and PAMA are among several US medical groups coordinating efforts. But so far, few have been able to reach hospitals under siege. <\/p>\n
Since the start of the war, only about 900 trucks carrying international aid \u2013 but not fuel \u2013 have been allowed to enter Gaza through the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, according to the Palestine Red Crescent Society. That\u2019s only a trickle compared to the approximately 500 trucks that entered each day before the war. PRCS warns that Gaza will need substantially more aid to meet growing humanitarian needs. <\/p>\n
Ahmad Muhanna, director of Al Awda Hospital in Jabalya, says the real nightmare is treating maimed children, whose faces he sees even when he closes his eyes. <\/p>\n
Doctors are performing surgeries, including amputations, on children without clean water, let alone anesthesia or antibiotics, he says. Many are being treated on the floor due to a lack of empty hospital beds. <\/p>\n
Israeli airstrikes at or near medical facilities have further complicated the matter, Muhanna, 49, adds. Medical workers are in constant danger. <\/p>\n
As of November 10, 198 health care workers have been killed and 130 others wounded in Gaza, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Ramallah. It also reports 21 hospitals and 51 primary health care centers are out of service. <\/p>\n
Israel says it\u2019s only targeting Hamas, whom it\u00a0accuses of using hospitals to hide and launch attacks. The Palestinian Ministry of Health and Hamas deny such claims. <\/p>\n
Israel says civilian deaths and the destruction of vital facilities, including hospitals, are collateral damage it tries to mitigate, and that Palestinians should flee to safer areas. But doctors in Gaza say it\u2019s impossible to evacuate patients without causing more death, and that nowhere is truly safe. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe Israeli air force is terrorizing us day and night above our tiny spot in the world,\u201d said Muhanna, who believes high casualties prove Israel is not trying to mitigate civilian deaths. \u201cThey don\u2019t have boundaries, no red lines they cannot cross. They have crossed every line by targeting women, elders, children, men, the disabled and every possible living thing.\u201d <\/p>\n
The chaos unfolding at Shifa, Al Awda and other hospitals across Gaza has left doctors exasperated. But with no ceasefire in sight and the borders tightly controlled, preventing vital supplies from reaching hospitals, more people will continue to die. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe feel helpless towards our patients,\u201d said Ghneim, the emergency room doctor at Shifa. \u201cWe want to provide patients with appropriate health care, but in many cases there\u2019s nothing we can do.\u201d <\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Nasser and Musleh scramble to fundraise, buy supplies and coordinate shipping to the Rafah border crossing, where truckers anxiously await permission to enter Gaza and unload their life-saving cargo. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe whole world turned their back on the people of Gaza,\u201d Nasser said. \u201cAnd right now we\u2019re only waiting for a miracle.\u201d <\/p>\n\n
Dr. Mohammed Ghneim has not left his hospital in Gaza City in four weeks. He can\u2019t remember the last time he slept or ate, and his blue scrubs are stained in the blood of patients who\u2019ve died in his arms. His voice cracks under the weight of the horrors he\u2019s seen: fetuses pulled from the <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":11498,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-11497","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11497"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11497\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}