At the hospital Kamal Adwan from Beit Lahia, the incubators only work thanks to solar panels due to power shortages in the Gaza Strip, almost five months after the start of the war between Israel and Hamas.
“This service can stop working at any time, depending on the weather,” he explains to AFP Ahmad al Kahlut, head of the pediatrics unit at this facility in northern Gaza, one of 12 hospitals out of 36 that still partially operate in the Palestinian territory.
The children’s hospital suffering from a lack of power
According to this doctor, the Kamal Adwan neonatal service, the only children’s hospital in northern Gazais under intense pressure due to the collapse of the health system.
Electricity shortage is a central problem in the current humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip, particularly for hospitals.
UN team visits Al-Shifa Hospital in northern Gaza
The World Health Organization (WHO), which visited the hospital this weekend, denounced “the lack of electricity” that “represents a serious threat” to hospital patients, especially in “neonatology.”
A team of the UN visited the Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City and brought aid, in the first time the world organization can deliver aid to northern Gaza besieged for more than a week, he indicated the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
A team of the OCHA, the World Health Organization and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) visited Al-Shifa and brought medications, vaccines and fuel to help ensure the medical facility continues to operate, noted OCHA.
The team also met with some of the wounded on Thursday as they waited for life-saving aid in western Gaza City. The hospital, the largest in the Gaza Strip, reportedly received more than 700 wounded in that incident, of whom around 200 are still hospitalized today, OCHA added.
Lack of energy in the Gaza Strip
Israelwho decreed a “total siege” of the territory after the Hamas attack on October 7, cut off the electricity supply to Gaza, which has since resorted to generators powered by fuel, also scarce.
According to a satellite image studypublished on Thursday by the NGO Care, 70% of Gaza hospitals have “little or no light” at night, which “seriously affects” care. “Electricity is a matter of life and death in hospitals,” said Hiba Tibi, director of the NGO in the West Bank and Gaza.
“We hear about newborns dying because there is no electricity for the incubators, of children who stop breathing “due to lack of respiratory assistance” or of mothers who die on operating tables because the “assistance or resuscitation” machines are turned off“he added.
WHO help
At the beginning of the conflict, The WHO indicated that 94,000 liters of fuel were needed every day to ensure a minimum service in the 12 main hospitals in the territory.
The first fuel deliveries authorized by Israeli authorities were made on November 18. This weekendWHO delivered 9,500 liters to Kamal Adwan and another center. However, “the quantities are still very insufficient,” he noted. an Amnesty International report at the end of February.
The start of the war between Israel and Hamas
The war in the Gaza Strip was unleashed on October 7when Palestinian Islamist movement fighters carried out a bloody attack and killed about 1,160 people in southern Israel, mostly civilians, according to a count by the AFP based on official Israeli figures.
In response, Israel vowed to “annihilate” Hamas and launched a military offensive that left at least 30,534 dead in Gaza, mostly civilians, according to the latest balance of the Ministry of Health of the territory, governed by the Islamist movement.
Source: Ambito
