A woman and a child look out from the window of a damaged building following Israeli bombing on Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, on 11 November, 2023. Photo: AFP / Said Khatib
A newly announced day-long ceasefire in the Israeli-Hamas war will do little to ease the desperation of Palestinians, a Médecins Sans Frontières co-ordinator says.
A last-minute agreement has been struck to extend a six-day ceasefire by at least one more day to allow negotiators to keep working on deals to swap hostages held in Gaza for Palestinian prisoners, Reuters is reporting.
Up to 200 aid trucks a day have also been crossing into Gaza but that is still woefully short of what is needed, according to aid groups.
Doctors treating the wounded in Gaza are appealing for some of the most basic supplies like gauze, burn cream, pins and fixtures for broken limbs.
Two Médecins Sans Frontières doctors and a colleague were killed in a missile strike on a hospital in northern Gaza earlier this month - they were among many healthcare casualties so far.
Jerusalem-based Dr Natalie Thurtle, MSF deputy medical coordinator for the emergency response in Gaza, said it had been extremely challenging dealing with the deaths of staff and some relatives of staff as well as having their compound come under attack during the Israeli bombardment.
She welcomed the announcement of the truce being extended, even if was only for a day, however, it needed to be permanent to start to address the needs in Gaza meaningfully.
"The need is absolutely overwhelming and it's impossible to meet that need because the health care infrastructure in Gaza has been systematically destroyed."
The cut in patient beds, the numbers of healthcare staff and medical supplies meant Gazans could not access proper medical care.
"The very basic things are missing... Things are really disastrous at this time."
MSF staff were doing 10-15 burns surgeries, as a result of explosive injuries, daily at the hospital in southern Gaza where they were based.
Some of the injuries were very complex because of the delay patients faced in trying to get medical care.
The Israelis have tried to stop people moving back to the north and have also prevented aid from reaching the north, she told Checkpoint.
Palestinians transport belongings in Gaza City on 27 November, 2023, on the fourth day of a truce between Israel and Hamas. Photo: AFP
'Extremely challenging' to stay on in Gaza
Dr Thurtle was asked if she believed staff would stay on in Gaza once the war resumed and she said it was very difficult to say; they just had to take it a day a time.
"Nowhere is safe in Gaza so it's really hard ... to continue to offer healthcare in this sort of context and we know that we've been deliberately targeted throughout this conflict [by Israel], so it's extremely challenging to make the decision to stay there."
Local medical staff had suffered "life-changing" trauma and while psychologists were available for them, they had endured the deaths of children and colleagues; in some cases their homes had been bombed and they had seen the medical programmes that had taken years to establish be destroyed in a few weeks.
She appealed to people to learn as much as they could about the region and its history and try and get their information from reliable news sources.
Nothing could excuse the scale of the manmade humanitarian disaster that had been created, she said.
-RNZ / Reuters
