In Gaza, medical staff are working 24-hour shifts and only get one simple meal. Deirdre Nunan, a Canadian orthopaedic surgeon who is currently volunteering at Al Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, told Al Jazeera that some medical staff have to work 24-hour shifts in the besieged enclave.
“There is a single meal that’s provided in the mid-afternoon, and it’s a simple meal. Yesterday it was plain lentils; a couple of days ago, it was rice cooked with just a few pieces of corn in it, so it’s neither nutritionally complete, nor is it enough calories to sustain somebody who’s working for a full day,” she said.
“When I talk to my colleagues about what they’ve eaten before they come to work, invariably they say nothing; they just had water.”
The Canadian volunteer surgeon added: “One of my nurse colleagues yesterday told me that every morning she cuts a pita bread into four pieces, one piece for four children. She does the same thing when she gets home after work.”
Deirdre Nunan, a Canadian orthopaedic surgeon who has volunteered several times in Gaza, tells Al Jazeera that the situation in the besieged enclave is “immeasurably worse” than when she was last there in April.
“Right now, I am seeing severe hunger and starvation amongst both my colleagues and my patients … I see people that struggle to get through a day’s work because they don’t have the energy to do their normal duties,” she said, speaking from Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, southern Gaza.
“I am seeing horrific injuries that people are sustaining when they try to go and collect food aid at these distribution sites that turn into massacres and result in dozens, if not hundreds, of patients arriving at our emergency room, many of whom are killed or lose their limbs as a result of these gunshots.”
The Canadian doctor added that she had seen people injured in Israeli air raids and attacks on their tents, with severe multi-system injuries and burns, and who were malnourished and did not have the ability to “get the extra calories and protein that they would normally need to heal from this kind of injury and to survive it”.
