Crisis in Gaza as Israel warns of long war with Hamas: Live updates

4:56 a.m. ET, November 2, 2023

Hospitals struggling under “avalanche of human suffering” in Gaza, doctor says

From CNN’s Kathleen Magramo

Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan describes what is happening in Gaza.

CNN

Doctors are struggling to treat patients with severe injuries under dire conditions in Gaza as Israel maintains its bombardment of the enclave, a medic with aid group Doctors Without Borders said.

Speaking from Amman, Jordan, Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan said the lack of medical supplies in Gaza meant doctors have been “completely stripped of all the tools of modern medicine” to treat patients — mostly women and children — with severe injuries and burns.

“Our hearts are burning. This is an avalanche of human suffering. And it’s 100% man-made,” Haj-Hassan told CNN’s Paula Newton.

Doctors at the strip’s largest Al Shifa Hospital are seeing children with the majority of their body and faces burned, missing limbs and other “catastrophic injuries,” said Haj-Hassan, a pediatric intensive care and humanitarian doctor with the aid group, which is also known as Médecins Sans Frontières.

“And the doctors are left to treat them with limited pain control, running out of anesthetic drugs.” she said. “We do not have enough antibiotics to treat wound infections, we don’t have enough dressings.”

Ceasefire call: Haj-Hassan called for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war, saying “a stop rather than a pause” is needed in what she described as the “indiscriminate bombardment and massacre.”

“We have lost over 130 health care providers, many of whom I have known personally. They have lost their families,” she said.

Medical workers in Gaza are working around the clock while they and their families also fear being bombarded, she said. But “they have refused to leave, because they have decided to stay with their patients,” she said.