Gaza: A Night in Al Shifa hospital
22 July, 8 am:

The MSF team is returning from Al Shifa hospital, in thecentre of Gaza City. Throughout the night, the wounded have been streaminginto the emergency department – many of them patients transferred from AlAqsa hospital, which was bombed the previous day.“It’s going to be a busy night,” says Alaa, an MSF driver, as the sun goesdown on 21 July. With missiles from Israeli tanks and navy ships explodinga few kilometres from MSF’s base in Gaza, the surgical team head for AlShifa hospital, where medical staff are already anticipating a large influxof wounded.“I’ve been caring for two new patients in intensive care in the major burnsunit,” says Adriana, an anaesthesiologist, who has just joined MSF’semergency team in Gaza. “One was a young mother, aged 24. The young womanhad been buried under the rubble of her house for 12 hours. She lost herdaughter and ten other family members there. We did everything we could tosave her, but she died this morning.”Adriana’s second patient was a ten-year-old boy. “The little boy had losthis father. His mother was with him. A missile struck their house, whichcollapsed. He suffered burns, crush syndrome and trauma, and had 100 woundsover his body from exploding shells.”After surgery, the boy was admitted to Al Shifa’s burns unit. One smallwound on his abdomen particularly worried Kelly, the secondanaesthesiologist in MSF’s emergency team. “It was a small cut in the bellythat wouldn’t stop bleeding,” Kelly says. “I requested a scan of hisabdomen and we saw that he had an internal haemorrhage. The bomb fragmentshad made seven perforations in his small intestine."“She saved his life,” says Adriana.Cosimo, an MSF surgeon, has just extracted a bullet from the cardiac veinof a 20-year-old woman. “The other two patients I operated on last nighthad chest wounds from explosions that occurred near them,” he says.Many of the wounded arriving at Al Shifa hospital have been transferredfrom Al Aqsa hospital, which was bombed earlier in the day.“A 20-year-old man was being treated at Al Aqsa when the hospital was hit,”says Kelly. “He was brought to Al Shifa’s emergency room. We had toamputate both legs below the knee. The operation took nearly three hours.”Most of the patients in the operating theatre have serious injuries thatrequire several surgeons. “Yesterday we had at least two neurosurgerycases,” says Kelly. Sometimes, by the time patients reach the operatingtheatre, it is too late to save them. “An eight-year-old girl was broughtin to the operating theatre,” says Adriana. “She had lost both her legs inan explosion and suffered multiple traumas, including head trauma. Otherthan ease her pain, there was nothing else we could do.”The emergency room is crowded with children with minor wounds. According toCosimo, some 30 percent of those admitted to the hospital are children.Tonight, the wounded are arriving at the intensive care unit in groups ofthree, four or five at a time. The first to be brought in come from theShuja’iyeh neighborhood, which is still being shelled. The last group seenby the MSF team come from the area around Al Aqsa hospital. At least fiveof the patients do not make it through the night.In the early hours of the morning, there is an aerial strike nearby. “Theentire burns unit building shook, like during an earthquake,” said one MSFteam member.At 8 am the team leaves the hospital and returns to MSF’s office. In turn,each person, cradling a cup of coffee, describes their night. The otherslisten, eyes lowered, to the grisly reports. According to the UN, more thanten people were killed and 130 were wounded in the night’s bombardment.Given what they witnessed the previous night at Al Shifa hospital, the teamagrees that the figures sound low.ENDS