The memories are unforgettable. A flood of screaming families carry their bloodied loved ones through the doors of an already flooded hospital. A little boy tries to revive a child who didn’t look much older than himself. A 12-year-old boy with shrapnel wounds to the head and abdomen intubated on the ground.
That January day at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis in southern Gaza — the aftermath of a rocket attack on an aid distribution site — has haunted Dr. Zaher Sahloul, an American intensive care specialist with years of experience treating patients in war zones, including Syria and Ukraine.
He and other volunteer doctors who have returned from besieged hospitals in Gaza brought their first-hand accounts of the carnage to Washington this week, hoping to convey to the Biden administration and senior administration officials that an immediate cease-fire is needed to provide life-saving medicine. care.
Among the data that Dr. Sahloul to show American officials – including members of Congress and officials from the White House, the State Department, the Department of Defense and the United States Agency for International Development – was a photograph of the 12-year-old boy and his death certificate. The child never woke up from surgery after being intubated, the doctor said, and the hospital was unable to contact his family amid a near-total communications blackout.
Two other doctors on the delegation — Amber Alayyan, deputy program director for Paris-based Doctors Without Borders, and Nick Maynard, a British surgeon — said powerful medical advances made by local doctors in Gaza had been wiped out by Israel’s war against Hamas.
Dr. Maynard, who earlier this year met with British Foreign Secretary David Cameron, said he was optimistic that if the US changed its ways in supporting Israeli forces in Gaza, then Britain would follow.
“This is the deliberate destruction of the entire health system,” he said in an interview.
Dr. Maynard described surgery on chest injuries from blasts with little anesthetic or antibiotics at Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al Balah in central Gaza in December and January. “The lack of pain relief was particularly concerning because we saw many children with terrible burns,” he said.
The availability of sterile gloves and surgical drapes was also limited, and the hospital’s record-keeping capabilities had collapsed, making monitoring care almost impossible, he said. Dr. Maynard said he walked through corridors filled with evacuees to check on patients he had operated on and sometimes couldn’t find them.
Also on the delegation was Thaer Ahmad, a Palestinian American emergency physician who was with Dr. Sahloul in January as Israeli forces surrounded Khan Younis and began closing in on Nasser Hospital, the largest still operating in the enclave at the time.
He said in an interview that he had a toddler and a 2-month-old baby at home in Chicago when he traveled to Gaza. He contrasted his wife’s experience of being able to give birth in a safe, well-resourced hospital with an obstetrician familiar with the plight of pregnant women in Gaza, who were starving and giving birth in shelters. “I had to go,” he said. “They are my people.”
Shortly after the doctors left Gaza, Nasser Hospital was raided by Israeli forces and forced to cease operations.
“I will regret for the rest of my life that I left when I did,” said Dr. Ahmad.
As the death toll in Gaza has soared to nearly 32,000 in five months, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, Palestinian Americans are “screaming at the top of our lungs and no one is listening,” he added.
“Numbers clearly don’t make a difference,” said Dr. Ahmad. “I’m afraid the tally could reach 40,000 or 50,000 and we’ll be in the same position. What else am I going to do?’
