KUALA LUMPUR: The humanitarian response to Gaza continues to fall short despite the prolonged crisis, which has resulted in more civilian deaths than injuries.
Doctors Without Borders (MSF) emergency coordinator Marie-Aure Perreaut Revial described such a situation as the illusion of humanitarianism as she bore witness to the chaos and destruction during her visit to Al-Aqsa Hospital.
"Foreign journalists often ask me how Gaza compares to other crises I have worked in. I say that in Gaza there is a humanitarian crisis, but no humanitarian response.
"Israeli officials make claims about the number of trucks being allowed through Rafah daily as if there is an acceptable ratio between the number of trucks and the number of people killed.
"But humanitarian aid is not about trucks, and the supplies being allowed in no way match the scale of the needs," she said in a report of her visit shared on MSF's official website.
Revival said a humanitarian response also involved the ability to assess, plan and work according to the needs of civilians.
However, MSF and a few international organisations were delivering very limited medical care under wildly abnormal conditions, she added.
"Healthcare workers in Gaza are holding the values of humanity in a time of great darkness.
"Meanwhile, the people who have the power to stop this humanitarian catastrophe do not do so. While they hesitate, doctors, nurses, and Palestinians are being massacred."
On the day of their visit on Nov 23, just before the announced humanitarian pause, the hospital received 314 wounded people and 121 who were dead or died shortly after arrival.
"They had expected these overwhelming casualties, explained Gazan colleagues, reminding us that this is not a new conflict. It's always like this before a truce.
"After that first visit, our team began working alongside the staff at Al Aqsa. It had a capacity for 200 in-patients before the war. At the end of December, they had more than triple that number," she said.
Revial said amid the pandemonium, healthcare workers had to face daily moral dilemmas to choose between MSF staff members or civilians.
"One day we were alerted that an MSF staff member and his family had arrived at the emergency department, badly injured. Colleagues rushed to find them – arriving in the chaos.
"Later, Dr Samir (not real name) told me, 'I had to make a choice – I saw Ghassan (not real name) and his son, they needed me, but next to them I saw a woman critically injured, she also needed me. What was I supposed to do?'
"Ghassan's son had been hit by shrapnel. He underwent multiple surgeries that day. The injuries to his throat affected his ability to speak. His mother lost an eye.
"That day, when Dr Samir came out of the operating theatre at 1am, his MSF jacket was covered in blood," she said.
Revial said by the end of December, the team in the wound dressing unit were seeing on average 150 patients per day, many of whom were children.
"One of MSF's surgeons told me about dressing the wounds of babies who had lost their legs. It stayed with him. Babies who had never learned to walk, and never will."
She said some of the children have a new acronym "WCNSF" written on their file which stands for "wounded child, no surviving family."
"Nine-year-old Salma (not real name) is one of the thousands of WCNSF. She suffered a fractured skull when the house her family was in was shelled. One of her legs was broken, the other had been amputated.
"We met her in the intensive care unit. She still didn't know that she was the only one who made it out of the rubble alive. The exhausted staff wanted to let her recover physically first."
She added that limited bed capacity still posed the biggest challenge faced by hospitals in South and Middle Gaza.
"The beds are needed to treat patients in critical condition, but those who have been stabilised have nowhere to go.
"Where should we send a patient like Salma? What do we say to her?
"When I left Gaza, I was asked by my colleagues to bear witness to their stories. I saw just the tip of the iceberg. And that small amount was unbearable to see."