‘Bodies scratched, bleeding and full of flies’: Infections plague Gaza’s hospitals

The critically wounded in northern Gaza’s largest hospital are seeing their wounds infected with flies and worms because of a lack of medicines and clean water, the facility’s most senior surgeon has warned.

Dr Marwan Abusada, head of surgery at Shifa Hospital, also said that they are having major issues with food and water shortages. 

All departments in the hospital are being cut off from water for up to eight hours, and are then only receiving salinated water, which cannot be used for hygiene or drinking.

“We have a health disaster. We have a type of worm, called white flies, covering the wounds after the surgery. They appear after one day,” Dr Abusada said in a detailed account sent to the Telegraph by UK charity Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP).

“Most injuries and surgeries have no follow-ups as the medical teams cannot cope with the influx of injuries every hour.” 

Calling the situation “disastrous,” he said that the wards have “zero” space left for patients. 

“On a normal day, we have a capacity of 210 beds, and now we have more than 800 patients that need to be admitted.”

“We are trying hard to continue delivering services to the patients who need kidney dialysis, urgent catheterisation, and neonatal incubators, but we are delivering the bare minimum, the situation is catastrophic.”

Dr Abusada shared a video, filmed on November 3, from inside the main operating theatre in Shifa. It shows the corridors lined with beds, and even cribs for young children, that are filled with bloodied bodies. Several of the injured appear to have lost limbs.

He also films through the windows of operating theatres, the floors are splattered with blood and littered with gauze and disposable operating gowns.

In the second video, he explains that the hospital has been forced to turn their sixth operating theatre, formerly the cardiac surgery room, into a recovery space for the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) patients.

The film shows that almost every bed is filled with children, their faces covered with bruises and grisly cuts. In one bed, two small children appear unconscious and are lying at opposite ends.

The video ends by focusing on one young boy, with a large stitched gash on the side of his head, sitting alone in his bed without a blanket. Dr Abusada says that was the only remaining person alive from his family.

The number of children reported killed in Gaza in just three weeks has surpassed the annual number of children killed in conflict zones since 2019, according to Save the Children.

On average, one child is killed and two children are injured every ten minutes during the war in Gaza, says The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA).

‘We have worms coming out of wounds, even after surgery’

Dr Tayseer Hassan, a surgeon at the nearby Indonesian Hospital in northern Gaza, said that they are seeing the majority of “horrific” injuries amongst children. 

She added that they have been forced to prioritise injuries with a higher chance of survival. Due to fuel shortages, they are no longer able to help emergency room patients in need of a ventilator. 

“I cannot describe the look on family members when they know that their loved ones will be left to die in a hospital.”

Patients aren’t even receiving “minimum care”, according to Dr Hassan. She said that patients are being returned to their makeshift beds on the floor after surgery, as all the beds and corridors are at capacity.

“The type of injuries we are seeing is not something a human mind can accept or tolerate. When I see these injuries, I wish that the injured and us, the doctors, die, as I think it will be much easier,” she said.

Dr Hassan said that the majority of cases they are treating are people who were pulled out of the rubble after surviving airstrikes. 

“All their bodies are scratched and bleeding and full of flies. We do surgeries while the injuries are covered with flies. And we have worms coming out of wounds, even after we do the surgery.”

She also warned about a surge in infectious diseases due to the complete lack of hygiene throughout the hospital. 

“Nothing is clean, nothing is sterile. Imagine the horrific consequences. I got infections myself, just from working with patients.”

An Irish-Palestinian surgeon, Dr Ahmed Al Mukalati, said Shifa hospital was working with less than 30 per cent of its healthcare workforce.

He told the Irish Times that in his department, they only had two surgeons to take care of 200 patients, operating on at least 10 cases per day. 

Many doctors are working 24-hour shifts, followed by 24-hours rest.

Gaza has been subject to intense shelling following Hamas’ attack on Israel on October 7, in which 1,400 people, mainly civilians, were killed, according to the Israeli authorities.

Hospitals in northern Gaza have been under particularly heavy bombardment, including Shifa, Al-Quds and the Indonesian Hospital, because the Israel Defence Force (IDF) says Hamas is using these hospitals, and their patients, as human shields against Israeli strikes.

Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, IDF spokesman, presented images on Sunday that he claims show an entrance to a network of terror tunnels under the Qatari-built Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani Hospital in Gaza City.

Hagari also shared a clip that he claims shows Hamas gunmen firing at surrounding Israeli forces from inside the hospital.

According to the Health Ministry in Gaza, of the 10,022 people that have been killed since October 7, at least 4,100 of these were children.

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