“Of course I know I risk my life, but I do it with my eyes open.”
The Norwegian doctor Mads Gilberta specialist in anesthesiology and emergency medicine, has been in Egypt for four weeks seeking to enter Gaza through the Rafah crossing.
For 16 years Gilbert has traveled to Gaza several times a year to teach medicine. And since the 1980s she has helped provide care in hospitals in the Palestinian territory, including those in Al Shifa and Al Quds.
Gilbert is professor at the University Hospital of Northern Norway and attempts to enter Gaza with an emergency medical team supported by the Norwegian government.
On October 7, Hamas carried out an attack on Israeli territory that left at least 1,400 dead, according to Israeli authorities, and more than 200 hostages.
The bombing of Gaza that Israel began shortly after, with the stated goal of ending Hamas, has left more than 11,000 dead, including more than 4,000 children, according to Gaza’s health ministry.
Gilbert spoke with BBC Mundo about the situation at Al Shifa hospital before gunshots and explosions were reported around the complex this Friday.
The BBC was able to verify a video that shows what appears to be the damage from a missile or mortar that hit the hospital courtyard.
Gilbert He spoke with BBC Mundo from Egypt, where he is waiting for permission to enter Gaza, and explained why he is returning to the Strip and what the conditions are in the territory’s hospitals.
“My life is not the problem”
When you are a doctor you can’t just look at the prescription or the stethoscope or the x-ray, you have to understand the social conditions in which people live. And for the Palestinians the situation is extremely difficult, it has been for more than 70 years, and it has become increasingly difficult.
So I go to Gaza to show solidarity as a doctor with my Palestinian colleagues, the doctors, the nurses, the ambulance paramedics.
I want to go there to show them that they are not alone and do medical work together with them. I know they can do it without me, but I also know that they need support and that in crisis situations we all need someone to come and say, ‘I’ll help you.’ That’s why I’m going to Gaza.
Every time I go to Gaza I know I am risking my life. But that’s not the problem. The problem is the lives of 2.2 million people in Gaza.
My life is not the problem.
And every time in life you are forced to make difficult decisions you have to think about what I gain, what others gain, what this means.
I have two sons. I have four grandchildren. My daughter tells me: “We don’t want you to go, but if she decides to go we will support you wholeheartedly.” And the same goes for the rest of my family.
And, of course, we have to risk something if we want to fight for a better world. Of course I know I’m risking my life, but I do it with my eyes open.
“I have never seen anything like it”
The conditions in the hospitals in Gaza are beyond what words can describe. I have worked in Gaza for many years and I have never seen anything like what is happening now.
I talk to my colleagues in Gaza several times a day, I watch videos.
It’s horrendous. It’s like a nightmare. It’s so bad that Gaza in 2023 makes Dante’s Inferno look like a tea party. Hospitals are without water, without electricity and without disposable materials such as bandages. They are without medications. And they are overcrowded.
Al Shifa Hospital, Gaza’s largest emergency center, has 300 beds and now has 1,000 patients. Three times more than the beds they have.
And they are completely overcrowded not only by patients, but also by 50,000 people who are among the 1.4 million who are displaced in Gaza because of the bombing of apartment buildings, of towns, of suburban areas, of all the structures in which people used to live.
“What do you do if you don’t have drinking water?”
[La Organización Mundial de la Salud advirtió en un comunicado el 8 de noviembre de más de 33.000 casos de diarrea mayoritariamente en niños menores de 5 años en Gaza]
The children in Gaza do not have water, and what happens when there is no water and in Gaza it is 30 degrees Celsius? Water from the body evaporates very quickly and you need at least one or two liters of drinking water a day.
But what do you do if you don’t have drinking water? You die, and children die sooner from dehydration than adults.
If you also have diarrhea and vomiting from the contaminated water you have to drink, you will die sooner.
Furthermore, among the nearly 25,000 injured in Gaza, almost half are children. Many of them have burns. Doctors tell me that the conditions are such that when they heal the burns, even if they heal them twice a day, there are maggots in the wound due to lack of water and disinfectants to clean the wounds properly.
Two days ago, due to lack of fuel for the generators, Al Shifa hospital had to close the machinery used to sterilize surgical instruments. And they had to stop the machines that produce oxygen for the hospital. And they had to close the refrigeration system of the morgue where all the dead are collected.
I’m still trying to get into Gaza. We are waiting for permits from Egypt, but the Rafah crossing has been closed and only a few trucks per day have been allowed to enter.
The situation is very difficult. But we don’t give up and there are many medical teams and many people who want to help.
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