About half of Gaza’s 2.3 million people were crammed into Rafah. (File)
London:
The main maternity hospital in the populous city of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip has stopped admitting patients, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) said on Wednesday.
The UNFPA told Reuters that the hospital, Al Helal Al Emirati Maternity Hospital, was caring for about 85 of a daily total of 180 births in Gaza before an escalation of fighting between Hamas and Israeli troops on the outskirts of Rafah.
About half of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been crammed into Rafah after fleeing other parts of the enclave during seven months of war.
Israel has threatened a major attack on Rafah to defeat thousands of Hamas fighters it says are hiding there. Around 10,000 Palestinians have left Rafah since Monday, an official at the UN agency for Palestinian refugees said on Wednesday.
The Emirates Hospital has only five birth beds. But after the mass influx of people to Rafah, which began in December due to Israeli airstrikes and fighting further north, the hospital became the main place for women to give birth in Rafah, said Dominic Allen, the country’s top official. UNFPA for the occupied Palestinian territories. in an interview with Reuters last month.
Other hospitals in the city, such as Abu Youssef al-Najjar Hospital, have been admitting war wounded and sending women in labor to the Emirates for months.
It was not immediately clear where women in Rafah trying to give birth in a hospital could do so. “Humanitarian partners, in coordination with the Ministry of Health, have created alternative health facilities that can provide different levels of care,” read the UNFPA statement to Reuters.
The World Health Organization hopes the Emirates will not be forced to close, the WHO’s top official for Gaza and the West Bank, Richard Peeperkorn, later told a news conference.
But since the latest escalation of the war, he said, some women in Rafah have started attending field hospitals in Rafah operated by charities including the International Medical Corps.
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UNFPA also recently brought “mobile maternity services” to Rafah, although some of the UN agency’s equipment had become stuck before this week at the border crossing with Egypt, he added.
An American midwife currently volunteering in the Emirates told Reuters on Wednesday afternoon that new patients were still being admitted to the hospital, but fewer women had arrived to give birth in recent days.
Bridget Rochios, who volunteers with the Canada-based medical charity Glia Project, said hospital staff have had to leave work early or not show up at all to evacuate their families since Monday, when Israel told Palestinians to evacuate parts of Rafah.
“We are also low on supplies and expect this problem to be exacerbated by the Rafah border closure,” she said in a Whatsapp text message.
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