GENEVA: The International Committee of the Red Cross has called for health workers and medical facilities in war-torn Gaza to be protected, adding the Gaza health system had “reached a point of no return.”
The Red Cross said that its health teams in recent days had provided critical supplies to medical structures in the Gaza Strip, and had seen “terrible images that have now gotten worse because of sharpened hostilities.” The Red Cross stated that this was cruelly affecting health facilities and ambulances and medical staff. “Overstressed, running on thin supplies and insecure, the health care system in the Gaza has reached a point of no return.”
Medical facilities and health workers across Gaza have repeatedly come under brutal attack since October 7. Such strikes have dealt “a heavy setback to the health care system in the Gaza Strip, which is weakened after more than one month of heavy war,” ICRC added.
Health System in Gaza
William Schomburg, chief of the ICRC sub-delegation in the Gaza Strip said “The devastation affecting hospitals in Gaza is becoming intolerable and needs to halt.” William Schomburg maintained that the lives of thousands of people, patients and medical staff are at high risk.
The ICRC noted that even children’s hospitals had not been spared from the attacks, including the Al Nasser Hospital, which had been heavily suffered by hostilities and Al Rantisi Hospital, which had been forced to stop operations.
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It added, “Our partner the Palestine Red Crescent Society has been working persistently to continue operating the Al-Quds Hospital, as it badly runs out of the essential means amidst growing hostilities.”
Gaza’s major hospital, Al-Shifa, which was hit by an attack on Friday, is meanwhile not only overwhelmed with patients but also hosting thousands of displaced people. According to ICRC “Any military operation near hospitals must consider the presence of civilian population, who are protected under global humanitarian law,”.
