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“We tried to create a family” Portraits of MSF health workers in Gaza healing the wounds of the Great March of Return

Between March 2018 and December 2019, thousands of Gazan people trapped in a 12-year-long Israeli blockade have protested every Friday along the fence separating the strip from Israel, calling for the end of the blockade and the right of return for refugees. The protesters faced a heavy response from the Israeli armed forces on the other side of the fence; tear gas, rubber-coated bullets and live ammunition. The Israeli forces killed 213 people and left more than 8,000 severely injured by gunshots, mostly in their legs.
Since March 2018, MSF teams in Gaza have treated more than 4,830 people injured during the Great March of Return in their trauma clinics and have scaled up the capacity to support those patients’ recovery. In May 2018 MSF started a limb reconstruction project in Al Awda hospital, and in January 2020 the team opened a newly-rehabilitated surgical ward and an inpatient department in the hospital, increasing the bed and surgical capacity for the project to two fully-equipped operating theatres, nine self-contained isolation rooms and two in-patient wards. Since May 2018, in Al Awda hospital MSF has assisted more than 490 wounded patients and has performed more than 1,340 surgical operations.

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