DOCTORS IN GAZA resorted to manually pumping oxygen into the lungs of a fatally-wounded patient for three days after the Al-Awda Hospital ran out of oxygen cylinders and ventilators. 

The man, who was brought to the hospital in Jabalia in north Gaza with critical injuries, died when no additional medical resources arrived due to an ongoing blockade placed on the region by the Israeli government.

Al-Awda Hospital is the last remaining partially-operating hospital in north Gaza.

Speaking from Gaza, Dr Mohammed Salha, the acting-director of the hospital, said that staff have been arrested and killed by the Israeli government while attempting to carry out lifesaving work at the hospital.

On 2 March, Israel formally began a full-scale blockade on Gaza’s access to food, water, fuel, medicine and other key humanitarian aid supplies.

Israel’s bombardment of Gaza continues. The country has scaled up a ‘full force’ offensive on Gaza in recent days.

Speaking to journalists this week, Salha said: “After ten weeks of total siege, people are dying. Not because we don’t know how to save them, but because we simply don’t have the basic and minimum needs to save them and provide them the services [they need].”

Blockades on fuel and oxygen supplies are forcing staff at the hospital to use manual air tubes for people needing ventilators. Doctors and nurses manually pumped oxygen for three days in an attempt to save one man.

“We used manual oxygen [pumps] for three days – 72 hours without stopping. Can you imagine what we went for 72 hours to save his life? After that, he died.

“Why? We simply couldn’t save with without proper medicine and oxygen cylinders.”

The doctor added: “Half of our beds capacity is now out of service to patients. Floors are totally destroyed. Our ambulances, medicine, medical supplies storage are also destroyed. Our [oxygen] distillation plant was also targeted and destroyed.”

Photo, dated 28 April, shows one floor of the Al Awda Hospital after an Israeli attack in Gaza. Alamy, file Alamy, file

He said he will never be able to forget the things he has seen over the last 19 months of conflict, particularly the deaths of young children with injuries and deformities, he claims, are consistent with wound caused by “internationally banned weapons”.

Salha referenced a reported case where one baby was bt orn at his hospital without a brain.

“To say that Al-Awda Hospital in the north of Gazan Strip has been working in the most-difficult and dangerous conditions does not really convey the horror of the situation on the ground,” Salha said.

Staff members killed and arrested

Following militant group Hamas’ terror attack on Israel on 7 October 2023, which led to the country’s military launching its largest offensive in Gaza in recent years, several medical staff members at the hospital have been arrested, he said.

Salha said many of these arrests have taken place without due process or judicial examination, including the hospital’s director Dr Ahmed Muhanna, who was detained by Israel in December 2023.

“Six staff members were killed inside the hospital, who were working inside the hospital to save lives, because of shelling and sniper attacks. Many others have been killed in their homes with the children too,” Salha added.

One midwife, he detailed, was killed alongside her son and her husband after an Israeli bomb was dropped on their home. There has been a total of 18 attacks on the hospital by the Israeli military.

On Tuesday evening, the night before an emergency press briefing this week, the population around the facility was given its second forced displacement order by the Israeli military this month, the doctor said.

The following morning, it was reported that Israel’s military killed more than 80 people in bombardments in Gaza overnight, including an airstrike which his the European Hospital in Khan Younis.

Al-Awda hospital has been placed under siege three times over the last few months, including in the days running up to the interview between Salha and international reporters.

“Even after 19 months of this hell, I can tell you that no one gets used to the sight of innocent babies killed or [injured] for life. Our hearts break in thousands of pieces every time,” Salha said.