A Medical Student in Gaza Tells Us What She’s Seeing
Reading Time: 8 minutesHealth care workers are struggling to provide even the basics., Gaza hospitals: What it’s like to be a medical student.
Gaza’s health care system is in catastrophic shape. Without access to basic resources, Gaza’s hospitals—and the people who work within them—have been forced into unconventional practices. Medical teams have had to ration ICU beds, dialysis sessions, and cancer treatments. Antibiotics are in limited supply. With nowhere else to go, thousands of Palestinians seeking refuge from arenas of war have sheltered in Gaza’s hospitals. But even hospitals are not safe from damage.
Israeli forces have launched countless airstrikes since the horrific Hamas attack on Oct. 7, and have covertly started a ground invasion of Gaza in recent days. Caught in the midst of war, thousands of Palestinians—including entire generations of families—have been killed, and hundreds of thousands more have been displaced from their homes. The damage done to the region, to the health of the people who live there, and to the state of the region’s health care services, will last for a long time.
To better understand what is happening on the ground, I spoke with Maryam, a medical student in Gaza, shortly before the communications blackout last week. (Maryam is a pseudonym; she requested we not use her name for fear of retaliation for speaking to the press.) We conducted our conversation over email and voice notes, and the transcript has been edited for clarity and length. We discussed the long-deteriorating state of Gaza’s health care system, what it’s like to survive in a war zone, and what she most wants readers in the U.S. to understand.
Vishal Khetpal: Tell me a little about yourself. Why did you choose a career in medicine? What has going to medical school in Gaza been like?
Maryam: I’m a fifth-year medical student. I got into medicine because at 16, 17 years old, I was fond of the idea of Doctors Without Borders as an organization. I wanted to be part of it, because for me, it was this organization that helps people living in war zones. By the time I was 16 years old, I had survived three aggressions on the Gaza Strip and multiple escalations. I have witnessed, firsthand, the lack of resources, human resources, and specialty doctors.
Recently, I’ve decided to pursue a career in plastic and reconstructive surgery, which is a very much needed specialization right now in the Gaza Strip because of the amount of disabilities and burns, horrific burns, that we have witnessed recently with the kind of weapons being used in the Strip. Generally, getting into medicine was mainly motivated by wanting to be of help to my people and of help to my community, to be able to offer something that there is a huge lack of.
How would you describe Gaza’s health system in the past, and at this moment?
It is commonly known among medical students and health care workers in general that the system suffers from a constant deteriorating state. There are huge restrictions on the amount of medical suppliers getting into the Strip. That has been the case for 17 years. For example, in the entire Gaza Strip, which has around 2 million people, even more, there’s only one functioning MRI. Most of the time it needs maintenance, and it stops for days and days. People come in and there’s a huge amount of people waiting to only get one scan. This is also the case for the CT scans, because in the entire Gaza Strip, there’s only, I guess, two functioning CT scanners, and they’re constantly out of service or there’s constantly a problem with them. Most cancer patients are transferred into either the West Bank or Egypt or other hospitals outside of Gaza. Most of them, even if they want to have their medications inside the Gaza Strip, only a very, very small number are able to have that. Right now, we don’t even know if our medical college is still standing or not. But we do know for a fact that there has been great damage by the amount of bombardment that has happened in the area where most of our university buildings are.
Are there any particular stories from the past week—from medical school, the hospitals, or personally—that are going to stick with you that you would want to share?
Now, the health care system is catastrophic, with every possible meaning this word can have. Right now they’re performing surgeries on wounded patients in the recovery room. The operating room is no longer enough to manage the amount of people who come in each and every night.
In hospitals, when the sun sets, everyone just prays to God that they can witness the sunrise, because when the sun sets, it’s the time where everything is 100 times worse than it is during the day. It’s the peak time for people coming into the ER and the amount of people they have to deal with. And it has been increasing steadily.
Some surgeries are being performed without anesthesia. Because there’s not enough alcohol to clean the wounds, they’re currently using vinegar from local shops near the hospital. Most of the hospitals are out of electricity and they’re using their phone flashlights to do some surgeries and to treat patients during the night—with the lack of human resources as well.
Most of the roads leading into the hospital have been either destroyed or huge buildings around it have been demolished. And this has affected the hospitals themselves. Some hospitals are even threatened to be bombarded and have been asked to evacuate. In each hospital, there are tens of thousands of people who have sought refuge there because they have nowhere else to go.
It is unimaginable. The situation is so horrific and horrible that no words can describe how bad it is right now, in the hospitals especially. People are being killed because of injuries that otherwise are normally controllable.
What is keeping you going at this moment?
There are some people who I have met and known for years from abroad that keep on sending me messages, checking on me, and telling me that there have been multiple demonstrations. They’re sending me videos, telling me that I’m not alone. They’re trying as hard as they can to support me.
Even people living in the other part of Palestine, people living in the West Bank, whom I have known through student-led organizations and voluntary work that we have been doing in medical school, they’re still checking on us and trying so hard to be there for us and telling us that we’re not alone.
I pray to God that they don’t stop—that people elsewhere don’t get used to it. Because getting used to this is the worst thing that can ever happen to humanity. Getting used to this amount of killing, this amount of horrific scenes.
In the long term, what are the potential repercussions of this humanitarian crisis on Gaza’s health care system, and what do you foresee in its future?
Hundreds of thousands of people are displaced into UNRWA schools, with very, very limited hygiene products. There have been talks about breakouts of cholera because of the polluted water. There has been talk about breakout of lice among children staying there.
There is a great health care crisis coming up after this one is over. Even with the wounded ones during this aggression, these people have been wounded, as I said, in the most diabolic way ever. There have been reports from people working in the hospitals that the kind of weapons that have been used are causing severe burns. Inside the hospital, they weren’t able to control bleeding, so they had to amputate people’s extremities, whether their hands or their legs. And we’re awaiting a crisis of the amount of people who are displaced, and they need to be taken care of. And the amount of people who have been out of work because of this ongoing aggression, people are not able to provide their own families with the basic needs because they haven’t been able to work, especially those who work on jobs where they get paid on a daily basis.
So, I can’t start to think of the amount of destruction that has happened so far. I haven’t even been able to go out and see the streets or the places that I used to know and live in. I really can’t start to comprehend, or understand, or even imagine the horrific scenes waiting for us and the destruction that has been caused. I’m not even sure that we’re going to be able to go back to medical school anymore because the university may have been destroyed.
There is a huge humanitarian crisis awaiting us, with the consequences of the destruction, the consequences of killing, the consequences of forever destroying the lives of thousands of people because of the injuries that are going to make them disabled or not able to go back to their lives anymore.
I don’t think that life is the same anymore. I don’t think that any of us is going to be able to go back to how they were able to live before—not that life prior to this aggression has been normal. Inside the Gaza Strip, we have been living in a blockade for over 17 years. And right now, it is officially not a place to live in anymore. And it breaks my heart that these are words I was forced to start to think of, of a place that I always have called home and a place that I have always dreamt of being able to give back to a community of people that have supported us or supported me throughout my life. And right now, I don’t know whether I’m going to be able to stay here anymore.
Is there anything else you’d want MediaDownloader’s readers, who are mostly based in the U.S., to know?
To be honest, I feel a little bit guilty for having a roof overhead. Yes, I had to evacuate my house three times within two days. I left my house and then I moved to a relative’s house in the northern part of Gaza Strip, and then they pounded the building right next to us and we had to run into the street. I ran, carrying my entire life in a packed bag and running to a different place. Then I had to risk my life and my family’s life moving from one city to another by car, which is something really dangerous to do at such times.
Even with stories like this, there are other hundreds of thousands of similar stories, or even more tragic and more miserable stories, about what people have been going through. One of my friends had to stand there and watch their entire house being demolished, not able to do anything about it, and they stood there, a street away from where they used to live. Two of my other friends who already have lost their houses have sought refuge in hospitals with tens of thousands of other people.
I think about those with whom I have spent hours and hours chatting and going to medical school with, having them as friends, celebrating together and living our lives. Then all of a sudden, our lives have been turned upside down.
I’m getting tired of all of this, of me having to explain all of this while I’m still under huge risk, huge risk of being killed at any moment. We’re just trying and trying to speak up and talk about the situation. It’s getting harder and harder, because we’re not really feeling that there has been any impact from it. One of the accounts that I know on Instagram has been documenting literally everything, and you can see the most horrific scenes there, and still nothing has been done. I don’t know if the world is watching us being killed and wiped out of existence and not doing anything about it, but it also pushes us to think about, ‘Really, is my life that worthless? Why am I being treated like less of a human for something that I had no control over, for being born in an area that I did not choose to be born in?’
I want people to educate themselves. I want them to read about the situation. I want them to speak up and to not stay silent. It’s not a trend. It didn’t happen now for the first time. It has been happening for years and years.
Reference: https://slate.com/technology/2023/11/gaza-hospitals-medical-school-health-care-war.html
Ref: slate
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