Foreign journalists are not allowed to enter Gaza, but continued reports are coming from healthcare workers about a catastrophic humanitarian situation. Swedish doctor Märit Halmin is one of 300 reportedly working at a field hospital and entered with a UN convoy.
– It becomes like a haze of blood, gunshot wounds, explosion injuries, amputations, she says.
– I don’t really have words to describe it, I had followed the news reporting before I came here and thought I would be prepared but it’s so terrible, she tells Swedish public radio P1.
– When I entered Gaza and was driven here it was almost like a moonscape, there are no buildings. There are just piles of rubble and debris, dust and sand from destroyed concrete. Everything is destroyed, she recounts.
“Bizarre and brutal injuries”
Halmin has previously been deployed in Yemen and Syria, but says the proportions in Gaza are completely different with masses of injured civilians streaming in with very severe injuries.
– I can’t even distinguish the individual patients because there are so many coming in with such bizarre and brutal injuries. It becomes like a haze of blood, gunshot wounds, explosion injuries, amputations, she says.
Help exists – but doesn’t get in
The doctor reports that there is a shortage of all types of resources, where the field hospitals have to improvise extensively and assist each other with the equipment they have, and she states that even her healthcare colleagues are severely malnourished.
– I think the main problem right now is perhaps not that too little help is being sent but that somehow there’s a silent acceptance that the help doesn’t get in because of the blockade that exists against Gaza.
