The World Health Organization announced that it led a mission to barely functioning hospitals in northern Gaza over the weekend, explaining that growing desperation and hunger had led some residents to snatch supplies from an aid truck.
The Director-General of the Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said late yesterday, Sunday, on the X platform, that the United Nations organization and its partners delivered aid, including fuel, to the destroyed Shifa complex in Gaza City, which was previously the largest and most advanced medical facility in the Palestinian Strip.
He explained that participants in the December 23 mission witnessed “increasing desperation due to acute hunger.”
“Partners are calling for an immediate increase in food and water to ensure the health and stability of the population,” Ghebreyesus added.
Ghebreyesus warned that “the continuing hostilities and the huge numbers of wounded have led to exhaustion” of the Al-Shifa Complex.
The UN official expressed his hope that the delivery of 19,200 liters of generator fuel on Saturday would help resume vital services in the hospital, which can currently only provide “the simplest first aid.” But he stressed the need for “more.”
Risk of famine
The facility, which was severely damaged and whose oxygen station was destroyed, provides refuge for about 50,000 displaced people, according to the hospital administration.
Sean Casey, WHO emergency medical team coordinator who participated in the mission, described the surgical wards as overcrowded.
At the same time, Casey said in a video clip filmed inside Shifa, where crowds of displaced people, most of them children, were taking refuge, that “everyone we talk to is hungry,” warning of the “danger of starvation.”
In an indication of the difficult situation, residents snatched food aid from a truck on its way to the hospital, according to the World Health Organization.
“With severe food shortages, the search for food is forcing people into horrific situations of hunger and causing some – out of desperation – to take supplies from delivery trucks,” the Director-General said.
“I can only imagine the agony that would push people to this point,” he continued.
Ghebreyesus warned that the dire situation in the Shifa complex is “a microcosm of the nightmare that the people of Gaza are experiencing, where severe shortages of medicines, food, energy, water and – above all – safety put the population at risk.”
Shortage of surgeons
The mission also visited Al-Sahaba and Al-Hilu International Maternity Hospitals, which assist in about 35 births daily, while facing shortages in fuel, food, water, oxygen, antibiotics, and anesthesia.
“Hospitals should be places of care and recovery, not places of constant danger and suffering,” Tedros said.
He reiterated his call for a ceasefire in Gaza, stressing the need for “continuous access to humanitarian aid.”
