Last Updated: November 12, 2023, 09:00 IST
Smoke rises as displaced Palestinians take shelter at Al Shifa hospital, amid the continuing battle between Hamas and Israel, in Gaza City, November 8, 2023. (Reuters)
WHO loses contact with Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza amid repeated assaults. Director-General requires rapid ceasefire and medical evacuations
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has misplaced contact with its focal factors in Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza, amid reviews of the hospital going through repeated assaults. Over the previous 48 hours, the biggest medical advanced in Gaza has been reportedly attacked a number of instances. The intensive care unit suffered harm from bombardment, whereas areas of the hospital the place displaced folks have been sheltering have additionally been broken.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus stated there are reviews that a few of those that fled the hospital have been shot at, wounded, or killed. “WHO has lost communication with its contacts in Al-Shifa Hospital in northern Gaza. As horrifying reports of the hospital facing repeated attacks continue to emerge, we assume our contacts joined tens of thousands of displaced people and are fleeing the area,” WHO Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean stated in an announcement.
Deeply worrisome and scary: @WHO has misplaced contact with its focal factors in Al-Shifa Hospital in #Gaza, amid horrifying reviews of the hospital going through repeated assaults.There are reviews that a few of those that fled the hospital have been shot at, wounded, or killed.
— Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (@DrTedros) November 12, 2023
In an announcement posted on X, Tedros stated the most recent reviews say the hospital was surrounded by tanks. “WHO is gravely concerned about the safety of health workers, hundreds of sick and injured patients, including babies on life support, and displaced people who remain inside the hospital,” he added. “WHO again calls for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza as the only way to save lives and reduce the horrific levels of suffering. WHO also calls for the sustained, orderly, unimpeded and safe medical evacuations of critically injured and sick patients. All hostages must receive appropriate medical care and be released unconditionally,” stated.
This report comes as WHO has verified greater than 250 assaults on hospitals, clinics, sufferers and ambulances in Gaza since Hamas’ incursion into Israel on Oct. 7 — as nicely as 25 assaults on well being care in Israel. In Gaza, the “health system is on its knees” and the state of affairs on the bottom “is impossible to describe,” Tedros earlier informed an emergency assembly of the U.N. Security Council. “As we speak, there are reports of firing outside the al-Shifa and Rantisi hospitals,” he stated, including that Palestinian well being employees have been nonetheless saving lives regardless of being “directly in the firing line.”
Last week noticed assaults on 5 hospitals in sooner or later in Gaza, the UN chief stated, and up to now 48 hours, 4 hospitals with some 430 beds have been put out of motion. He stated half of the Gaza Strip’s 36 hospitals and two-thirds of its major well being care facilities are usually not functioning, and amenities which might be functioning “are operating way beyond their capacities.”
(With company inputs)
