GAZA CITY: There is little that Gaza’s doctors can do to alleviate the pain of three-year-old Suhaib Khuzaiq, who still suffers from a shrapnel injury that resulted in the amputation of his leg above the knee last December.
“He is in pain and in need of painkillers and a prosthetic limb that is only available outside Gaza,” his father, Ali Khuzaiq, 31, told AFP from Gaza City’s Al-Ahli hospital, where Suhaib receives treatment.
On December 6, an Israeli airstrike on their neighborhood of Tal Al-Hawa, southwest of Gaza City, injured Suhaib and destroyed their home, displacing the family, who are now staying with relatives, Khuzaiq said. The ongoing war and Israel’s blockade have caused a severe shortage of medicines and destroyed much of Gaza’s medical capacity.
As a result, amputations have become a primary method for handling injuries that might have been treated differently under other circumstances. This has caused the number of amputations to soar further. According to UNICEF data, around 10 children in Gaza lose one or both legs daily on average. This means approximately 2,000 children have lost legs since the start of the war.
UNICEF’s spokesman Jonathan Crickx later told AFP that gathering data in a war zone is challenging, so the figures are only estimates that will take time to verify. However, the agency “has met many children who have lost limbs.”
Mahmoud Basal, a spokesman for Gaza’s Civil Defence agency, corroborated these estimates, explaining that civil defence crews frequently recover children who have lost limbs in the aftermath of strikes.
Medical sources indicate that amputations are often the only available option but must be performed under inadequate conditions. Dr. Maher, a surgeon at Al-Ahli Hospital, explained, “There are moments when anesthesia is not available, but in order to save the lives of citizens, we resort to amputation, which causes severe pain for the wounded.”
He added, “Every day, there are Israeli attacks that result in amputations of legs or arms for children, adults, and women.” Proper prostheses are in short supply in Gaza, which is under a tight blockade that restricts the entry of medical equipment and medicines.
“God willing, the crossings will open, and Suhaib will receive treatment outside Gaza. Hospitals here have neither treatment nor medicines,” Khuzaiq said. The situation is particularly dire in northern Gaza, where access is harder, and most hospitals are “going out of service due to direct targeting by the Israeli army.”
Marwa Abu Zaida, 40, and her eight-year-old son, Nasser Abu Drabi, also hope to travel abroad for treatment and prostheses. Their limbs were amputated following injuries sustained from an Israeli strike on their home in the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahia.
“I hope that the war will end, that the crossing will be opened, and that facilities will be provided to us so that we can travel, install (artificial) limbs, and live our lives normally,” Marwa told AFP from Al-Ahli Hospital. “My son and I worry when we need to change the wound dressing because of the pain we are experiencing,” she added, noting the lack of painkillers.
Medical evacuations, crucial for many, are rare in Gaza. Bashar Murad of the Palestinian Red Crescent in Gaza emphasized, “There is no cancer treatment in Gaza. We cannot treat cases with chemotherapy or radiation inside the Strip.” He added, “The health sector has collapsed entirely in Gaza. 25,000 cases require traveling out of the Strip for treatment, and only 4,000 have been able to leave.”
Ali Khuzaiq has little hope that his son will be evacuated. “People get sick, and the healthy fall ill. There is no hope, comfort, or anything uplifting,” he lamented.
Since October 7 last year, Israel has launched a relentless bombardment campaign in Gaza, killing at least 37,765 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to data from the health ministry in Gaza.
