UN warns of worsening medical conditions at Gaza’ al-Aqsa Hospital

UNITED NATIONS: Majority of Gaza’s 36 hospitals have been put out of action due to relentless Israeli bombardments of the besieged enclave, the UN World Health Organization (WHO) said Monday.

Remaining medical facilities face dire shortages, the Geneva-based UN agency noted.

At al-Aqsa Hospital, the last functioning hospital in central Gaza, a WHO team on Sunday witnessed what it said were “sickening scenes,” with patients being treated on blood-streaked floors, according to a social media post from WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

“They’re treating children on the floor. … The floor is actually covered in blood. There are patients coming in every few minutes,” Sean Casey, the WHO emergency medical teams coordinator in Gaza, said in a video from the hospital.

He added that due to evacuation orders and the dangerous situation, there were only five doctors left to oversee hundreds of emergency cases and casualties. “It is really a chaotic scene.”

A UN team on Friday delivered medical supplies to Gaza authorities in Khan Younis, and WHO coordinator Casey said it was “the first time we’ve been able to make this delivery in about 10 days.”

“Hospitals have been running short on some supplies,” he said, adding that medical facilities were “working at two or three times their normal capacity.”

Echoing those concerns, Tedros, the WHO chief, in a post on X reported “immense needs” at the hospital,“especially health workers, medical supplies and beds. But staff said their greatest need was for their hospital, and its staff, patients and families there, to be protected from strikes and hostilities.”

More than 600 patients “and most health workers” had reportedly been forced to leave the facility, Tedros said, adding that it was “inconceivable” that the protection of health care could not be counted on.

According to the UN health agency, no hospitals are “fully functioning” in northern Gaza. Another WHO mission had to be cancelled to the north on Sunday, Tedros said, “due to dangers and lack of necessary permissions”. Elsewhere in Gaza, “a mere handful of health facilities operate”, the WHO chief said.

In recent days casualty numbers have “increased markedly”, Tedros continued, with “over 120 trauma cases and dozens of dead arriving per day due to increased shelling, gunshot wounds, crush injuries from collapsed buildings, and other war-related trauma”.

WHO is also involved in plans to deploy an emergency medical team to support medical teams at Al-Aqsa. “This will only be possible in a secure environment,” the UN health agency’s Director-General noted.

In a separate update on the emergency confirming “intense” Israeli strikes “across (central) Deir Al Balah governorate and the southern cities of Khan Younis and Rafah”, OCHA reported on Sunday evening that Israeli forces “struck targets in Gaza city, Jabaliya Camp, Tal Az Za’atar, and Beit Lahiya” causing “a very large number of fatalities” in the Al Fallouja area of Jabaliya Camp.

Rocket fire into Israel by Palestinian armed groups also continued, the UN aid office said, amid “ground operations and fighting…across much of the Gaza Strip, resulting in additional fatalities”.

Latest data from the Gazan health ministry cited by the UN aid wing indicated at least 22,835 fatalities since Israeli military strikes began after October 7.

OCHA also noted reports of 225 Palestinian fatalities between Friday and Sunday and almost 300 injured, with 174 Israeli soldiers killed in Gaza and more than 1,000 injured since ground operations began, according to the Israeli Defence Forces.

Amid ongoing deadly violence, UN Children’s Fund UNICEF estimated that there are now approximately 3,200 new cases of diarrhoea per day among under-fives. Before the escalation in hostilities, the average was 2,000 per month.

There is also dire concern for nine in 10 children under two years old who are now in “severe food poverty” and “only getting grains (including bread) or milk” to eat.