Middle East
US doctor describes suffering in Gaza hospital: “There is no death with dignity, no more morphine”
A Palestinian injured in Israeli airstrikes stands with his child in Al-Aqsa Hospital on Thursday
© Naaman Omar / APA Images / Zuma Press Wire / DPA
A US doctor describes an indescribable scene from the Al-Aqsa Hospital in the Gaza Strip. In just a few days it would no longer be possible to work there at all.
Painkillers are missing in Gaza hospital
“So we give patients on the verge of death, in the agony of death, midazolam, a drug for anxiety, but which does not relieve pain,” said the doctor. Medicine often cannot do more for patients than relieve them of pain. But in Gaza even that is no longer true; dying people cannot be given relief. “There is no death with dignity when you are lying on the floor of an emergency room in Gaza and when the hospital is out of morphine and mobile oxygen machines.”
Fighting in the Middle East
In ruins: This is what the north of the Gaza Strip looks like after seven weeks of war
According to Jilani, it is thanks to “absolutely heroic nurses, doctors and volunteers” that Al-Aqsa Hospital is still functioning at all. But even so, it will only be able to work for a few more days, she added.
As a result of Israeli military operations, 23,469 people have been killed and a further 59,604 injured since the start of the war, according to the latest figures from the Hamas-controlled health authority. The numbers cannot currently be independently verified. Israel invokes its right to self-defense after the bloody attacks by the terrorist organization Hamas and other extremists on October 7, 2023. Around 1,200 people were killed and around 250 were kidnapped from Israel, around half of whom have been released so far.