The stories coming out of Gaza’s hospitals are harrowing. People flooding into hospitals with missing limbs, bodies crushed and extensively burned. Amputations and surgeries happening without anesthetics. Some patients are septic due to lack of infection prevention — health workers can’t perform surgeries in sterile conditions and don’t have the antibiotics or surgical dressings. People are cared for in crowded hospital hallways because beds are maxed out.
“Every time there's an airstrike, there’s a hiatus when they are waiting for the emergency services to bring the patients in — and then they come in a flood. This is happening every single day,” said Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan, a Canada-based pediatric intensive care and humanitarian doctor who works with Médecins Sans Frontières and has been going to Gaza to teach medical staff for about a decade.
The reports she hears from colleagues in Gaza describe unimaginable levels of pain. Children with burns all over their bodies, bones penetrating from their skin, and who suffocated to death. And they endure this without sufficient pain medications, of which hospitals are running out.
About the author
Sara Jervingsarajerving
Sara Jerving is a Senior Reporter at Devex, where she covers global health. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, VICE News, and Bloomberg News among others. Sara holds a master's degree from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism where she was a Lorana Sullivan fellow. She was a finalist for One World Media's Digital Media Award in 2021; a finalist for the Livingston Award for Young Journalists in 2018; and she was part of a VICE News Tonight on HBO team that received an Emmy nomination in 2018. She received the Philip Greer Memorial Award from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 2014.
