Two French doctors returning from the Gaza Strip, after spending several weeks at the European Hospital, spoke about the horrific situation in the region, performing surgeries under "terrible" conditions amidst a severe shortage of disinfectants, while patients and the injured suffer, and deaths are "inevitable." According to (AFP), during a press conference held in Marseille today, Dr. Khaled Ben Boutref, an emergency medicine specialist from Toulouse, stated: "There is no longer any means to disinfect the hospital wards." He added, "We struggled to treat patients and the injured; there were no stretchers, so we had to treat critically injured patients on the ground," emphasizing that one of the difficulties lies in the large number of displaced persons who have taken refuge in the hospital and are now "scattered in the corridors, waiting rooms, staircases, and even in some elevators."
In turn, infection specialist Pascal André noted that many patients contract serious infections after surgeries "because the department is not clean enough" in the absence of disinfectants, asserting that "the situation is horrific and unjustifiable." He added, "I saw patients in the intensive care unit with tubes in their mouths receiving artificial respiration, their eyes wide open due to the lack of sedatives," explaining that some humanitarian aid trucks remain stuck at the border between Egypt and the strip.
André remarked that "it is clear they were shooting at children. The injuries are very specific and calculated," referring to the case of an eleven-year-old girl who was paralyzed after being shot in the neck. The two doctors expressed their regret over the lack of attention to their testimonies since returning to Europe, with André stating, "I feel pain from this silence."
