The WHO says only half of Gaza’s 36 hospitals remain partially operational after 15 months of Israeli attacks.
After a ceasefire agreed by Israel and Hamas halted more than 15 months of war in Gaza, Dr Jamal Salaha spoke of the relief he felt as dead and wounded people finally stopped streaming into his hospital.
“This was the first time the hospital reception or the emergency department was empty,” Salaha, a general practitioner at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, told Al Jazeera on Monday.
A day earlier, the ceasefire had halted 471 days of relentless Israeli attacks that killed more than 47,000 Palestinians and wounded more than 111,000.
Salaha had just started working at Gaza City’s al-Shifa Hospital when the war erupted in October 2023.
He worked in the neurosurgery department for 33 days before being forced to relocate to Al-Aqsa Hospital due to Israeli attacks.
Throughout Israel’s war on Gaza, Salaha said he had only three days off work and treated people under harrowing conditions.
“Every day we received wounded people, most of them in critical condition,” he said. “We did a lot of surgeries, … including some on the floor because we did not have enough capacity. We [often] operated without gloves, without enough medication and no ventilators.”
When the ceasefire was announced, Salaha described it as “unbelievable” news and said he could finally sleep more soundly again.
But he remains cautious about the future, citing the scale of the devastation across the Gaza Strip, the breakdown of its health system and the possibility of violence reigniting.
“There is joy and excitement [over the ceasefire] everywhere, and people think that this ceasefire will bring life back to normal. But this is not true,” Salaha said. “The state of the hospitals is very chaotic.”
“We need a lot of medicines and medical supplies in order to deal with all [the remaining] cases.”
The World Health Organization said on Monday that only half of Gaza’s 36 hospitals remain partially operational.
Nearly all hospitals are damaged and just 38 percent of primary healthcare centres are functional, it added.
In most parts of the coastal enclave, the ceasefire appeared to be holding despite reports of isolated incidents of violence.
At least eight people have been injured by Israeli forces in Rafah in the south, according to Al Jazeera Arabic.
Mohammad Nemnem, a medical worker at the now out-of-service Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, described the scale of the damage after Israeli forces had “burned and destroyed” the facility.
“No department in the hospital can offer any medical service,” he told Al Jazeera.
“The hospital needs massive efforts and a lot of time to be a hospital again that can provide people with medical services.”
