Doctor Recounts Harrowing Experience in Gaza (Feb-Apr 2024)

Witnessing Indiscriminate Bombing in Gaza

• 🎯 Dr. Aqsa Durrani, a physician with Doctors Without Borders, describes her experience in Gaza from February to April 2024.
• ⚠️ She states that the reported number of nearly 20,000 child deaths from the conflict is not surprising, given the relentless and indiscriminate bombing witnessed.
• 📉 Concerns are raised that the number of casualties pulled from rubble could be underestimates.

Suspension of Operations and Patient Care

• 🏥 The organization was forced to suspend activities in Gaza, leaving vulnerable patients without care.
• 💔 This includes newborns, new mothers, and patients with severe illnesses and amputations who cannot flee.
• 😥 Thousands of patients seen in clinics prior to the suspension are now left without medical attention.

Access Challenges and Risks

• 🗺️ Dr. Durrani explains that many areas in Gaza are militarized, making access difficult or unsafe due to forced evacuation orders.
• 💥 Air strikes and advancing tanks near their facilities in Gaza City led to the decision to pull out.
• 🕯️ The risks have become untenable, with 15 colleagues killed, three in the weeks leading up to the suspension.

Destruction of Civilian Infrastructure

• 🏗️ Dr. Durrani asserts that she never saw militants in any hospitals she worked in.
• 🧱 What she witnessed was the destruction of every fabric of society by Israeli forces, with civilian infrastructure entirely demolished.
• ⛓️ A severe blockade continues to block essential supplies like medication, fuel, and water.

Collective Punishment and Call for an End

• ⚖️ The situation is described as collective punishment of the Palestinian people.
• 🌍 The term genocide is used to describe the systematic and total destruction impacting the entire Palestinian population in Gaza.
• 🙏 Colleagues on the ground express exhaustion and trauma, with their primary desire being an end to the conflict, peace, security, and the ability to provide basic needs for their children.