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'As a Human Being, I Beg': Doctors Say Cease-Fire in Gaza Only Way to Save Countless Lives
Fresh demands for a major increase in humanitarian aid and an end to the bombing came as Gaza's only cancer hospital shut down due to a lack of fuel.
Nov 01, 2023
As the World Health Organization warns of an "imminent public health catastrophe" in Gaza amid Israeli attacks on medical workers and infrastructure, doctors and other frontline medics said Wednesday that only an immediate cease-fire would give them a fighting chance to save countless lives.
Responding Wednesday to the shutdown of the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital—Gaza's only cancer treatment center—due to lack of fuel and damage from Israeli airstrikes, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that "no words can describe our concern for the patients who have just lost the only possibility to receive lifesaving cancer treatment or palliative care."
Tedros added: "I urge and I plead—for full medical and fuel aid access NOW! The more we wait, the more we put these fragile lives at risk."
The WHO chief's plea came a day after Christian Lindmeier, a spokesperson for the Geneva-based United Nations agency,
warned that "an imminent public health catastrophe... looms with the mass displacement, the overcrowding, the damage to water and sanitation infrastructure."
Meanwhile, James Elder, a spokesperson for the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), said Tuesday that "child deaths due to dehydration, particularly infant deaths due to dehydration, are a growing threat."
The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) called Gaza a "graveyard" for children, more than 3,600 of whom have been killed by Israeli bombardment, with another 1,000 minors reported missing, according to Palestinian and other officials.
Israeli forces have attacked numerous hospitals, clinics, ambulances, and medical workers, including the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital and al-Hilu Hospital. The Gaza Health Ministry said Wednesday that the bombardment that damaged al-Hilu "endangers the lives of women in the maternity wards and medical staff."
According to an "urgent call for protecting healthcare workers in Gaza" published Tuesday in the British medical journal The Lancet, Israeli forces have attacked 57 medical facilities since launching the war on Gaza on October 7, killing 73 workers—including doctors, nurses, paramedics, and others—as of October 24. Sixteen of the medical personnel were killed while on duty.
As Israel's bombardment of Gaza exacts a heavy toll on overwhelmed medical workers and infrastructure in the besieged strip, frontline medics like Dr. Noureddein al-Khateeb—a 38-year-old resident doctor in the emergency department at the Nasser Medical Center in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis—say they are living "in a constant state of threat and fear."
"It's constant fear on top of the exhaustion we're experiencing," al-Khateeb toldThe New Humanitarian on Wednesday. "But one shouldn't think of that too much. I can't. If I do, I won't get any work done."
Al-Khateeb added that "we're also afraid for our families' safety, but what can we do?"
Dr. Mohamed Abu Mousa, a radiologist at Nasser, said one of the few trips he's made outside the hospital since Israeli bombardment began was to bury his 7-year-old son after he was killed in an October 15 Israeli airstrike on their family home.
"We don't have the luxury of pausing to grieve," he told The New Humanitarian. "The heartache is immense, but the wounded are endless. We have to keep going."
Conditions are dire inside Gaza's hospitals, which are running out of or low on fuel, medicines, equipment, and other essential services and supplies.
"We're operating on children without anesthetics," Léo Cans, who heads the Doctors Without Borders (MSF) mission in Palestine, toldCNN Tuesday. "We don't have morphine for them."
On Wednesday, MSF international president Dr. Christos Christou said in a video published on social media that "we've seen and heard the stories of the hell being unleashed on Gaza" as "helpless people are being subjected to horrific bombing" and "families have nowhere to run or hide."
Christou continued:
So many people need help. What medical staff can do is just a drop in the ocean compared to the immense needs. Our teams working in Gaza are exhausted and terrified. Our staff tell us that pregnant women can't get to hospitals to deliver. People are stuck under the rubble of shelled-out buildings. Children are having limbs amputated while lying on the floor.
"An immediate cease-fire is the only way the people of Gaza can find safety and the essential aid they urgently need," Christou asserted. "The bombing, the all-out assault, needs to stop now... As a human being, I beg—stop the bombing and allow people in Gaza to live."
The Gaza Health Ministry said Wednesday afternoon that at least 8,796 Palestinians—including nearly 2,300 women and over 3,600 children—have been killed in Israeli attacks, while around 23,000 other people have been injured.
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Refugees 'Will Pay the Real Price,' Says Charity After Italy Detains Rescue Ship
"This is simply the wrong way to address this humanitarian crisis," said the U.N. human rights chief of a new law that imposes new regulations on migrant rescue ships in the Mediterranean.
Feb 24, 2023
The international charity Medicins Sans Frontiers said late Thursday it is "assessing what legal actions" the group can take to contest a new anti-refugee law passed in Italy, under which the group was informed its rescue ship is being detained and prevented from rescuing migrants for 20 days.
The group, also known as MSF or its English name, Doctors Without Borders, said Italian authorities entered its rescue ship, Geo Barents, on Thursday evening to inform the crew of a new law passed by the country's parliament.
The law requires ships to request access to a port and proceed to Italy "without delay" after rescuing migrants trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea, like the more than 630,000 people whose lives have been saved by Geo Barents and other ships since 2015.
Charities say the new "code of conduct" also requires crews to dock in ports in northern Italy, far from where rescues take place.
Previously, the Geo Barents has conducted multiple rescues and brought dozens of people on board before proceeding to a port where they can disembark in Italy and apply for asylum.
The ship is now in administrative detention for 20 days and MSF has been ordered to pay a $10,500 fine.
"This is not acceptable!" tweeted MSF.
Organizations that disobey the new code could be fined more than $53,000 and have their rescue vessels impounded, Al Jazeera reported.
"Today our team was supposed to be back at sea to prevent more deaths in the Central Mediterranean," said MSF Friday. "Who will pay the real price of the detention imposed on Geo Barents?"
\u201c\u26ab\ufe0f Today our team was supposed to be back at sea to prevent more deaths in the #CentralMediterranean. \n\u2753 Who will pay the real price of the detention imposed on #GeoBarents? \nThe people crossing the #CentralMed who will be left without assistance.\u201d— MSF Sea (@MSF Sea) 1677251885
The International Organization for Migration says that less than two months into 2023, at least 157 people have been reported as missing and presumed dead after attempting to cross the Mediterranean from northern Africa.
Far-right Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni has been denounced by human rights experts for her hardline anti-immigration stance. Her government has previously refused to allow rescue ships to enter ports and has barred refugees from leaving ships after they arrive in Italy.
Meloni's government has claimed the Mediterranean rescues by MSF and other humanitarian groups encourage people to make the dangerous journey across the sea, but MSF has said its work is vital, as refugees will attempt to reach Europe regardless of whether they believe they'll encounter a rescue ship.
"We all watch with horror the plight of those crossing the Mediterranean, and the desire to end that suffering is profound," said U.N. human rights high commissioner Volker Türk this week, after the new code of conduct was proposed. "But this is simply the wrong way to address this humanitarian crisis. The law would effectively punish both migrants and those who seek to help them. This penalization of humanitarian actions would likely deter human rights and humanitarian organizations from doing their crucial work."
Other rights groups expressed solidarity with MSF after it temporarily lost its ability to operate Geo Barents.
\u201c\ud83c\uddee\ud83c\uddf9 is stepping up its crackdown on civil fleets to obstruct their work of saving lives. \n\nWe stand in solidarity with #GeoBarents and all search & rescue ships!\u201d— ECRE (@ECRE) 1677227665
"Once again, the central Mediterranean is emptied of a vital rescue asset," said SOS Mediterranee, which operates a ship called Ocean Viking. "Civil rescue ships are only filling the deadly gap left by E.U. States in the central Mediterranean. Criminalization of search and rescue at sea must end."
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