{"id":49911,"date":"2025-08-06T16:41:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-06T16:41:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/49911\/"},"modified":"2025-08-06T16:41:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-06T16:41:07","slug":"a-young-surgeon-fights-to-save-lives-in-gaza-at-the-battered-shifa-hospital","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/49911\/","title":{"rendered":"A young surgeon fights to save lives in Gaza at the battered Shifa hospital"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Dr. Abeer Al-Gharbawi performs surgery illuminated by the flashlights of two cellphones during a power outage at Shifa Hospital.Jehad Alshrafi\/The Associated Press<\/p>\n

At Shifa hospital in the Gaza<\/a> Strip, nothing is sterilized, so Dr. Jamal Salha and other surgeons wash their instruments in soap. Infections are rampant. The stench of medical waste is overwhelming. And flies are everywhere.<\/p>\n

Without painkillers, patients moan while lying on metal beds lining the corridors. There\u2019s no electricity and no ventilation amid searing heat, leaving anxious visitors to fan bedridden relatives with pieces of cardboard.<\/p>\n

Shifa, once the largest hospital in Gaza and the cornerstone of its health care system, is a shell of its former self after 22 months of war. The hospital complex the size of seven soccer fields has been devastated by frequent bombings, two Israeli raids and blockades on food, medicine and equipment. Its exhausted staff works around the clock to save lives.<\/p>\n

Former Israeli officials call for end to war in Gaza as Netanyahu hints at expansion<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cIt is so bad, no one can imagine,\u201d said Salha, a 27-year-old neurosurgeon who, like countless doctors in Gaza, trained at Shifa after medical school and hopes to end his career there.<\/p>\n

But the future is hard to think about when the present is all-consuming. Salha and other doctors are overwhelmed by a wartime caseload that shows no sign of easing. It has gotten more challenging in recent weeks as patients\u2019 bodies wither from rampant malnutrition.<\/p>\n

Shifa was initially part of a British military post when it opened in 1946. It developed over the years to boast Gaza\u2019s largest specialized surgery department, with over 21 operating rooms. Now, there are only three, and they barely function.<\/p>\n

Because Shifa\u2019s operating rooms are always full, surgeries are also performed in the emergency room, and some of the wounded must be turned away. Bombed-out buildings loom over a courtyard filled with patients and surrounded by mounds of rubble.<\/p>\n

Salha fled northern Gaza at the start of the war \u2013 and only returned to Shifa at the beginning of this year. While working at another extremely busy hospital in central Gaza, he kept tabs on Shifa\u2019s worsening condition.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had seen pictures,\u201d he said. \u201cBut when I first got back, I didn\u2019t want to enter.\u201d<\/p>\n

After graduating from medical school in 2022, Salha spent a year training at Shifa. That is when he and a friend, Bilal, decided to specialize in neurosurgery.<\/p>\n

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Shifa hospital now has just a fraction of the operating rooms it once had.Jehad Alshrafi\/The Associated Press<\/p>\n

But everything changed on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas attacked Israel<\/a> and Israel\u2019s retaliatory campaign began.<\/p>\n

For the first few weeks of the war, Salha was an intern at Shifa. Because Israel had cut off Gaza\u2019s internet service, one of Salha\u2019s jobs was to bring scans to doctors around the complex. He had to navigate through thousands of displaced people sheltering there and run up and down stairwells when elevators stopped working.<\/p>\n

Once Israeli troops moved into northern Gaza, he and has family left. Bilal, who stayed in Gaza City, was killed a few months later, Salha said.<\/p>\n

Not long after Salha left, Israeli forces raided Shifa for the first time in November 2023.<\/p>\n

Israel said the hospital served as a major Hamas command and control centre. But it provided little evidence beyond a single tunnel with two small rooms under the facility.<\/p>\n

It made similar arguments when raiding and striking medical facilities across Gaza even as casualties from the war mounted. Israel says it makes every effort to deliver medical supplies and avoid harming civilians.<\/p>\n

Under international law, hospitals lose their protected status if they are used for military purposes. Hamas has denied using hospitals for military purposes, though its security personnel can often be seen inside them and they have placed parts of hospitals off limits to the public.<\/p>\n

Many people in Gaza make the trek every day to haul all their drinking and washing water.<\/p>\n

Reuters<\/p>\n

Israeli forces returned to Shifa in March 2024, igniting two weeks of fighting in which the military said it killed some 200 militants who had regrouped there.<\/p>\n

The hospital was left in ruins. The World Health Organization said three hospital buildings were extensively damaged and that its oxygen plant and most equipment were destroyed, including 14 baby incubators.<\/p>\n

While all this was going on, Salha worked at a hospital in central Gaza, where he performed over 200 surgeries and procedures, including dozens of operations on fractured skulls. Some surgeons spend a lifetime without ever seeing one.<\/p>\n

When he returned to Shifa as a neurosurgeon resident, the buildings he used to run between \u2013 some had been rehabilitated \u2013 felt haunted.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey destroyed all our memories,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Shifa once had 700 beds. Today there are roughly 200, and nearly as many patients end up on mattresses on the floor, the hospital manager said. Some beds are set up in storage rooms, or in tents. An extra 100 beds, and an additional three surgery rooms, are rented out from a nearby facility.<\/p>\n

The hospital once employed 1,600 doctors and nurses. Now there about half as many, according to Shifa\u2019s administrative manager, Rami Mohana. With Gaza beset by extreme food insecurity, the hospital can no longer feed its staff, and many workers fled to help their families survive. Those who remain are rarely paid.<\/p>\n

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

A poorly ventilated and unsanitary warehouse built in the yard of Shifa hospital is crowded with patients.Jehad Alshrafi\/The Associated Press<\/p>\n

On a recent morning, in a storage room-turned-patient ward, Salha checked up on Mosab al-Dibs, a 14-year-old boy suffering from a severe head injury and malnutrition.<\/p>\n

\u201cLook how bad things have gotten?\u201d Salha said, pulling at al-Dibs\u2019 frail arm.<\/p>\n

Al-Dibs\u2019 mother, Shahinez, was despondent. \u201cWe\u2019ve known Shifa since we were kids, whoever goes to it will be cured,\u201d she said. \u201cNow anyone who goes to it is lost. There\u2019s no medicine, no serums. It\u2019s a hospital in name only.\u201d<\/p>\n

There are shortages of basic supplies, like gauze, so patients\u2019 bandages are changed infrequently. Gel foams that stop bleeding are rationed.<\/p>\n

Shifa\u2019s three CT scan machines were destroyed during Israeli raids, Mohana said, so patients are sent to another nearby hospital if they need one. Israel has not approved replacing the CT scanners, he said.<\/p>\n

Patients wait for hours \u2013 and sometimes days \u2013 as surgeons prioritize their caseload or as they arrange scans. Some patients have died while waiting, Salha said.<\/p>\n

After months without a pneumatic surgical drill to cut through bones, Shifa finally got one. But the blades were missing, and spare parts were not available, Salha said.<\/p>\n

\u2033So instead of 10 minutes, it could take over an hour just to cut the skull bones,\u201d he said. \u201cIt leaves us exhausted and endangers the life of the patient.\u201d<\/p>\n

When asked by The Associated Press about equipment shortages at Shifa, the Israeli military agency in charge of aid co-ordination, COGAT, did not address the question. It said the military \u2019\u2019consistently and continuously enables the continued functioning of medical services through aid organizations and the international community.\u2033<\/p>\n

Opinion: As a Jewish Canadian, I want my community to speak out about the horrors in Gaza<\/a><\/p>\n

From his time at the hospital in central Gaza, Salha can\u2019t shake the memory of the woman in her 20s who arrived with a curable brain hemorrhage. The hospital wouldn\u2019t admit her because there were no beds available in the intensive care unit.<\/p>\n

He had wanted to take her in an ambulance to another hospital, but because of the danger of coming under Israeli attack, no technician would go with him to operate her ventilator.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had to tell her family that we will have to leave her to die,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Other stories have happier endings.<\/p>\n

When a girl bleeding from her head arrived at Shifa, Salha\u2019s colleague stopped it with his hand until a gel foam was secured. The girl, who had temporarily lost her vision, greeted Salha after her successful recovery.<\/p>\n

\u201cHer vision was better than mine,\u201d the bespectacled Salha said, breaking a smile.<\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes it seems we are living in a stupor. We deal with patients in our sleep and after a while, we wake up and ask: what just happened?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: Dr. Abeer Al-Gharbawi performs surgery illuminated by the flashlights of two cellphones during…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":49912,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[901,888,902,879,877,903,49,48,876,895,896,891,878,875,46,549,295,894,887,914,880,881,893,84,392,889,890,884,904,885,909,910,912,907,911,905,908,882,898,899,714,897,906,865,61,900,892,886,883,913],"class_list":["post-49911","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-alberta","tag-arts-news","tag-bc","tag-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news-video","tag-british-columbia","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-canada-news","tag-canada-sports","tag-canada-sports-news","tag-canada-trafficcanada-weather","tag-canadian-breaking-news","tag-canadian-news","tag-economy","tag-education","tag-environment","tag-federal-government","tag-foreign-news","tag-globe-and-mail","tag-globe-and-mail-breaking-news","tag-globe-and-mail-canada-news","tag-government","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-life-news","tag-lifestyle","tag-local-news","tag-manitoba","tag-national-news","tag-new-brunswick","tag-newfoundland-and-labrador","tag-northwest-territories","tag-nova-scotia","tag-nunavut","tag-ontario","tag-pei","tag-photos","tag-political-news","tag-political-opinion","tag-politics","tag-politics-news","tag-quebec","tag-sports-news","tag-technology","tag-travel","tag-trudeau","tag-us-news","tag-world-news","tag-yukon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49911","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49911"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49911\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}