No more functioning hospitals in Northern Gaza: WHO Director-General

Geneva [Switzerland]: World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has said that Northern Gaza has no more functioning hospitals, The New York Times reported.

The WHO Director-General described scenes of horror witnessed by aid workers in the ruins of two partially destroyed medical facilities.

In a statement posted on X, the WHO chief said that aid workers who visited Al-Ahli and Al-Shifa hospitals on Wednesday during a rare humanitarian mission to deliver supplies “struggled to describe the immense impact recent attacks have had on these health facilities.”

At Al-Ahli, the aid workers found rows of dead bodies lined up outside the hospital, while severely injured civilians writhed in pain on the floor and the pews of the chapel inside of it, he said, as per The New York Times.

A video posted by Tedros shows a member of the medical mission standing inside the chapel, with injured people and crucifixes on the wall visible behind him.

The aid worker in the video, Sean Casey, says: “There are patients here who have been injured for more than a month and have had no surgery; there are patients who have been operated on and are now getting post-operative infections because the hospital doesn’t have sufficient antibiotics.”

“They are suffering enormously here,” he adds. “This is a completely unacceptable situation.”

The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs took part in the mission, which it said was only the third humanitarian convoy to reach northern Gaza since a pause in fighting ended on December 1 because of “the ongoing hostilities.”

A spokeswoman for the Israeli government did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the WHO’s claims. Israel has accused Hamas of using hospitals as command and control centres, allegations that Hamas and medical staff have denied.

The Israeli military says it has uncovered tunnels and weapons, including at Al-Shifa, the territory’s largest hospital complex, that it considers proof of its allegations, according to The New York Times.