THE UN’S REPRODUCTIVE health body has decried the intentional destruction of complex and hard-to-obtain medical equipment in Gaza’s hospitals and maternity wards, further heightening risks to women already giving birth in “inhumane, unimaginable conditions”.
Recent United Nations-led missions to 10 Gaza hospitals found many “in ruins” and just a couple capable of providing any level of maternal health services, said Dominic Allen, the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) representative for the State of Palestine.
He said that what the teams found at the Nasser hospital complex, long besieged by Israeli forces during their operations in the southern city of Khan Younis, “breaks my heart”.
Speaking to journalists in Geneva via video-link from Jerusalem, he described seeing “medical equipment purposefully broken, ultrasounds – which you will know, is a very important tool for helping ensure safe births – with cables that have been cut”.
“Screens of complex medical equipment, like ultrasounds and others with the screens smashed,” he added.
Only 10 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals are currently even partially functioning.
And Allen said that only three of those were now capable of providing assistance to the estimated 180 women giving birth across Gaza every single day – around 15% of whom suffer complications requiring significant care.
Israeli forces have been laying siege to, raiding and fighting in hospitals across the Gaza Strip since the conflict began, claiming that Hamas fighters have been operating in or beneath them.
The Israeli military recently withdrew from Gaza’s largest hospital – the Shifa hospital in Gaza City – leaving the complex in ruins and strewn with dead bodies.
A mass grave at the site of Shifa hospital was discovered this week by civilians returning to search for loved ones.
Allen warned that this “purposeful, wanton destruction in the maternity ward”, coupled with other damage, and lacking water, sanitation and electricity, was complicating efforts to get Nasser hospital up and running again “to provide a lifeline”.
Meanwhile at Al-Khair, another specialised maternity hospital in Khan Younis, “it didn’t seem as if there was any piece of working medical equipment”, he said, lamenting that the birthing rooms “stand silent”.
“They should be a place of giving life and they just have an eerie sense of death.”
The Emirati Hospital in the south, which is the main maternity hospital in Gaza currently, is for instance, supporting up to 60 births every single day, including as many as 12 Caesarian sections, he said.
Given the heavy pressure on the facility, women are discharged just hours after giving birth, “and after C-sections, it is less than a day”, Allen said, stressing “that increases risks”.
These are the remains of the Al Shifa Hospital following the siege.
— UNFPA (@UNFPA) April 16, 2024
Maternity wards and operating theatres are reduced to rubble.
Medical supplies destroyed, little to no working equipment remaining, an utter disregard for human life.
Hospitals are #NotATarget.#CeasefireNOW pic.twitter.com/be8RoUfOuv
He said there was clearly a risk in the numbers of complicated procedures linked to “malnutrition, dehydration and fear, which impact the pregnant woman’s ability to give birth safely and carry their baby to full term safely”.
A doctor at the Emirati hospital had told Allen that “he no longer sees normal-size babies”.
Amid a “completely crippled” health system in Gaza, the UNFPA is “deeply concerned about the ability to provide postnatal care”, he said.
“It’s full of the smell of death.”
— UNFPA (@UNFPA) April 12, 2024
Until recently, pregnant women received life-saving care at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, #Gaza.
Now it sits empty and burning.
Let @UNFPAPalestine representative Dominic Allen show you the destruction alongside a @UN team. pic.twitter.com/UZq7YGTzzk
He said that the agency was deploying midwives and midwifery kits to makeshift centres being set up in schools to help fill the gap.
On 12 April, Allen reported the destruction of maternity facilities in Gazan hospitals. In a video posted on X (Twitter), he said: “It’s full of the smell of death.”
Israel’s siege, bombardment and invasion of Gaza has killed more than 34,000 people, mostly women and children, according to the territory’s health ministry.
Includes reporting from AFP
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