CAIRO– The 35 American doctors and other international doctors came to Gaza in teams of volunteers to help one of the territory’s few hospitals that still function. They brought suitcases full of medical supplies and trained for one of the worst war zones in the world. They knew the healthcare system was decimated and overwhelmed.
The reality is even worse than they imagined, they say.
Children with horrible amputations. Patients with burns and wounds full of maggots. Galloping infections. Palestinian doctors and nurses who are exhausted after seven months of treating endless waves of civilians injured in Israel’s war with Hamas.
“I didn’t expect it to be this bad,” said Dr. Ammar Ghanem, a Detroit ICU specialist with the Syrian American Medical Society. you come and see.
Israel’s incursion into the southern Gaza city of Rafah exacerbated the chaos. On May 6, Israeli troops seized the Rafah crossing into Egypt, closing the main entry and exit point for international aid workers. The teams were stuck beyond the scheduled end of their two-week mission.
On Friday, days after the teams’ scheduled departure, talks between US and Israeli authorities yielded results and some of the doctors managed to leave Gaza. However, at least 14, including three Americans, chose to stay, according to one of the organizations, the Palestinian American Medical Association. The U.S.-based nonprofit medical group FAJR Scientific, which organized a second team of volunteers, was not immediately contacted. The White House said 17 Americans left Gaza on Friday and at least three chose to stay behind.
Among those who left was Ghanem, who said the 15-mile journey from the hospital to the Kerem Shalom intersection took more than four hours as explosions raged around him. He described some tense moments, such as when an Israeli tank crossing targeted the convoy of doctors.
“The tank moved and blocked our path and they aimed their weapons at us. So it was a scary moment,” Ghanem said.
The 14 Palestinian American Medical Association doctors left behind include American Adam Hamawy. US Senator Tammy Duckworth credits Hamawy with saving his life when, as a military helicopter pilot in Iraq in 2004, he was hit by an RPG, causing injuries that cost him his legs.
“Three of the U.S. citizen doctors on our teams refused to leave without a formal replacement plan for them,” said association president Mustafa Muslen.
The two international teams have been working since the beginning of May at the European General Hospital, on the outskirts of Rafah, the largest hospital still operating in southern Gaza. Volunteers are mostly American surgeons, but include medical professionals from Great Britain, Australia, Egypt, Jordan, Oman and other nations.
The World Health Organization said the UN, which coordinates visits by teams of volunteers, is in talks with Israel to resume the movement of aid workers in and out of Gaza. The Israeli military said it had no comment.
The doctors’ mission gave them a first-hand look at a healthcare system that was destroyed by Israel’s Gaza offensive, triggered by Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel. Almost two dozen hospitals in Gaza are no longer functioning and the remaining ten are only partially functioning. Israel’s campaign has killed more than 35,000 Palestinians and injured more than 79,000, according to Gaza health officials. Almost 500 health professionals are among the dead.
The Rafah military operation, which has lasted almost two weeks, has caused more than 600,000 Palestinians to flee the city and disperse across southern Gaza. Much of the Palestinian staff at the European Hospital left to help families find new shelter. As a result, foreign volunteers are divided between medical emergencies and other tasks, such as trying to find patients inside the hospital. There are no personnel to record where arriving wounded are placed. The medicines that the teams brought are running out.
Thousands of Palestinians are sheltering in the hospital. Outside, sewage overflows into the streets and drinking water is brackish or polluted, spreading disease. The road to Rafah hospital is now unsafe: The United Nations says an Israeli tank fired at a marked UN vehicle on the road on Monday, killing one UN security officer and wounding another.
When the attack on Rafah began, FAJR Scientific’s 17 doctors lived in a guesthouse in the city. With no warning from the Israeli army to evacuate, the team was surprised by bombs falling a few hundred meters from the clearly marked house, said Mosab Nasser, CEO of FAJR.
They left, still wearing their uniforms, and went to the European Hospital, where the other team was staying.
Mohamed Tahir, a London orthopedic surgeon at FAJR, performs several surgeries a day on little sleep. He is frequently awakened by bombings that rock the hospital. The work is frantic. He remembers opening a man’s chest to stop the bleeding, without time to take him to the operating room. The man died.
Tahir said that when the attack on Rafah began, Palestinian colleagues at the hospital nervously asked if the volunteers would leave.
“It makes my heart very heavy,” Tahir said. Palestinian people know that when the teams leave “they no longer have protection; and that could mean this hospital becoming Shifa, which is a very real possibility.” Israeli forces invaded Gaza City’s Shifa Hospital, the largest in the territory, for the second time in March, leaving it in ruins. Israel alleges that Hamas uses hospitals as command centers and hideouts, an accusation that Gaza health authorities deny.
The patients Tahir saved keep him alive. Tahir and other surgeons operated for hours on a man with serious injuries to his skull and abdomen and shrapnel in his back. They performed a second surgery on him Wednesday night.
“I looked at my colleagues and said, ‘You know what? If this patient survives – just this patient – everything we did, or everything we experienced, would be worth it,’” Tahir said.
Ahlia Kattan, an anesthesiologist and California ICU doctor at FAJR, said the most difficult case for her was that of a 4-year-old boy, the same age as her son, who arrived with burns on more than 75% of his body, his lungs and spleen were destroyed. He didn’t survive.
“He reminded me so much of my son,” she said, holding back tears. “Everyone has different stories here that they take home.”
Weighing heavily on all the volunteers, Kattan said, is “the guilt we already felt when we left, that we were able to escape safely.”
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Associated Press writer Ellen Knickmeyer contributed to this report from Washington.
This story originally appeared on ABCNews.go.com read the full story
