(C) Common Dreams
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Why the US must support an immediate ceasefire in Gaza [1]
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Date: 2023-11
The situation in Gaza is only becoming more disastrous each day. In Gaza City, people have told us they are afraid to go to hospitals because they are either attacked or at risk of being attacked at any time. Early on Friday, Al-Shifa Hospital was reportedly hit by a projectile. The source and extent of the damage could not be immediately verified.
“I was heading to Al-Shifa Hospital to work this morning when the facility was hit. All of us were horrified, some of us threw ourselves to the ground,” said Maher Sharif, an MSF nurse. “I saw dead bodies, including women and children. This scene was horrific and made all of us cry. Medical staff were terrified, trying to save their lives and their families."
In recent weeks, Al-Shifa Hospital—the biggest hospital in the Gaza Strip—has been overcrowded with patients. Without enough hospital beds, many people were being treated on the floor. Most of the operating rooms are no longer functional, and the hygiene situation is alarming. Mothers who just gave birth are malnourished and can’t produce milk to feed their babies, putting them at risk of starvation. Tens of thousands of displaced people have been sheltering outside Al-Shifa for safety.
WCNSF: Wounded child, no surviving family
Our colleagues describe taking care of so many wounded children, often arriving scared and alone, with no relatives. They use a disturbing acronym to identify these children who need special attention: WCNSF, wounded child, no surviving family.
We are seeing children who are coming in with the majority of their bodies burned. These are extremely severe injuries that are hard to treat effectively even in high-resource settings, yet MSF has been able to provide specialized burn care to patients at Al-Shifa Hospital for years. Our doctors have experience treating children who are fighting for their lives. In these situations, they say children need two main things: They need pain relief and they need the security of their families. Today, too many children in Gaza don’t have either of those things.
The world is watching
Our organization was founded on principles that include bearing witness and speaking out about what we see in our clinics and hospitals. Every day our staff are being interviewed by the media and asked about the situation on the ground. And every day we recount the horrors our teams are witnessing. The entire world is watching, and yet the killing of innocent civilians continues.
The truth is that our colleagues are running out of words to describe the extent of the pain and suffering in Gaza right now. How do we remind the world that these people on their television screens—bloodied and laid out on hospital floors, rescued from under the rubble of bombed-out buildings—are human beings, with dreams and lives and loved ones? How many more civilians will be killed before the world says enough?
As humanitarians, we stand with our colleagues and our patients in Gaza to call for an immediate ceasefire now to save lives.
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[1] Url:
https://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/latest/why-us-must-support-immediate-ceasefire-gaza
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