PHA-Exch> The Lancet on Gaza situation (Feb. 14th)

[Claudio Schuftan]

  From: may haddad may_haddad at hotmail.com

 Gaza's health and humanitarian situation remains fragile Original Text
excerpt
Jan McGirk<http://www.thelancet.com/search/results?fieldName=Authors&searchTerm=Jan+McGirk>
 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are recovering from the 3-week Israeli
assault on the isolated enclave, which injured thousands of civilians and
damaged key medical facilities. Jan McGirk reports.
The medical system inside the besieged Gaza Strip has managed to avoid total
collapse, although casualty units underwent enormous strain last month
during the Israeli military assault.
Emergency medical supplies have recently reached hospitals, and volunteer
teams of skilled foreign doctors from places as disparate as Jordan,
Argentina, and Greece, along with several Arab-Israelis from Physicians for
Human Rights, are helping tend the wounded, even though spare parts for
essential medical equipment and ventilators are still scarce. Although 638
patients with severe injuries have been evacuated for specialist treatment
abroad, thousands of patients remain.
22 days of bombardment by Israeli fighter aircraft, warships, and tanks had
stretched Gaza's hospitals nearly to breaking point, but weeks after
hostilities eased on Jan 18, help is now getting through for the 5390 Gazans
injured during the Israeli military assault. According to the Palestinian
Ministry of Health, women and children (younger than 18 years) comprised
half of the wounded, and about 12% will face a lifetime of disability. Of
1380 Palestinians killed, 431 were children (see
webappendix<http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(09)60182-3/fulltext#sec1>).
In addition, since Dec 27, 2008, three Israelis were killed by rockets and
mortars fired by Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip. Eleven Israeli soldiers
were killed and 340 were wounded during the invasion.
The statistics in the medical sector are grim. Medical staff were caught in
the fray and at least 16 health professionals died on duty, with a further
25 injured. Some 15 ambulances and 40 health facilities were damaged or
destroyed during the assault.
Human-rights activists are investigating accounts of witnesses that the
Israeli Army denied medical aid to the wounded in Gaza and prevented
ambulances from reaching them, as well as five incidents of firing on
civilians carrying white flags. Israeli Government sources insist that their
troops did their best to avoid civilian casualties and blame Hamas for
hiding behind human shields.
UN officials contend that the 120 or so lorry loads of humanitarian aid
allowed in per day provide less than a quarter of what is needed by Gaza's
stricken population of 1·4 million.
   A team of physicians from Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), who had been
held up for 10 days at the Egyptian border, responded in exactly the same
way they had after a major quake in the Himalayas in 2005. MSF doctors
assembled a sterile inflatable surgical unit, with its own water supply and
air conditioning, to treat septic abdominal wounds and do secondary
surgeries on amputees and crush injuries.
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