Australian medical workers are staffing a new Red Cross field hospital established in Rafah, in southern Gaza, as continued hostilities deepen a spiralling health crisis in the territory.
Israeli offensives have intensified in Gaza with witnesses reporting helicopter strikes and street battles in Rafah as hundreds of thousands of people flee intense fighting across the city.
There are now two Australians working at the new 60-bed Red Cross field hospital with three new candidates planned to rotate into the hospital this month.
The newly established field hospital will provide emergency surgical care; obstetric, gynaecological, maternal and newborn care; paediatric care; as well as an outpatient department. It will also have the capacity to provide mass casualty management.
It will be able to provide medical care for approximately 200 people a day.
The population of Rafah swelled from 280,000 to more than 1.5 million people over the initial months of the conflict, as displaced Palestinians fled bombardment and sought sanctuary in Gaza’s south.
But, after a warning from the Israel Defense Forces ahead of its initial attacks on Rafah in the past week, an estimated 500,000 civilians have left the city. Roads heading north and west are described as being choked with cars, trucks, trolleys and pony carts laden with people and their possessions.
There are acute shortages of food, fuel and clean water in Gaza and aid convoys into the territory have been attacked by Israeli settlers.
Gaza’s healthcare has been devastated by the six-month conflict.
According to the World Health Organization, 23 of the 39 hospitals in Gaza are no longer functioning and those that are still operational are overwhelmed by the number of patients, the severity of their health needs, dwindling resources to treat them and displaced people looking for safe shelter.
“Medical staff are faced with people arriving with severe injuries, increasing communicable diseases which could lead to potential outbreaks, and complication related to chronic diseases untreated that should have been treated days earlier,” the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said in a statement.
“Amputations are common, as well as acute respiratory infection, gastrointestinal illnesses and skin diseases which are spreading rapidly through displaced communities due to a lack of clean water, sanitation, and access to food.
“Chronic and serious illnesses, such as diabetes, heart disease, pneumonia, infectious and non-communicable diseases, to name a few, are not receiving the attention they deserve because the priority is to treat the critically wounded.”
The ICRC and the Red Cross national societies of 11 countries – including Australia, Austria, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Hong Kong, Iceland and Japan – are combining to establish and run the field hospital.
The Red Cross field hospital is being set up to support the work of the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS). Seventeen PRCS workers have been killed while on duty and a number of facilities have been damaged including Al-Amal and Al Quds hospitals.
The conflict began when Hamas attacked southern Israel on 7 October killing about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking another 250 hostage. Hamas still holds about 100 people captive and the bodies of another 30.
More than 35,000 Palestinians have been killed since the conflict began and nearly 8,000 of those are children, according to Palestinian officials.
