Issues under Fire: Gaza Ceasefire Holds Long Enough to Witness Humanitarian Need
Day 36 of the Assault on Gaza: With the latest 72 hour ceasefire holding steady, humanitarian aid flows into Gaza bringing a glimmer of relief to the weary. While the death toll will certainly surpass 2000 after more rubble rummaging, its the survivors and the wounded the world remains focused upon. Since these ceasefires are notoriously fragile, its important to sneak a peak at the aftermath while the view is available. What a mess!
A frenzied hustle for food, water and shelter keeps Gaza all a buzz during this brief cessation from Israeli air strikes. While search and rescue teams methodically sift though mounds of concrete and cinderblocks for the slightest hints or sounds of life, others stand ready to pull dust covered rag doll-like bodies from heaps for a proper burial. Numb to the macabre nature of the task, most now perform their duties mindlessly. This is the dirty work!
Those lucky enough to be found alive, actually, ain't so lucky at all. Many facing severed limbs, paralysis, blindness and worse have long waits in unsanitary, makeshift war zone triage units. Some may call them hospitals, but when they've been shelled as often as they've been by the Israelis, a makeshift war zone triage unit is all that's left. Having lighting issues, water shortages and improper medical waste disposal, you don't want to think about the ugly medical outcomes forced upon the wounded.
One need only glance at any Gaza "medical facility" to see wailing women and screaming children left in overcrowded corridors worrying about a loved one. Imagine your child being taken into surgery and you have no idea if the person helping that child qualified. Imagine an eleven year old girl begging to have her father seen immediately because he's her only living relative left. Medical professionals are forced to play God everyday, deciding who gets the last band-aide and who bleeds out.
When the injured are stacking up to the rafters and overworked medical staffs are reduced to providing care with first aid kits and flashlights, you know some hard medical choices are being made, but you don't want to think about them. You don't want to think about the pain a surgeon feels knowing a child's arm could have been saved if only a proper medical environment existed. You don't want to think about what goes though a kid's mind when he or she awakens from emergency surgery to discover a leg missing. You don't want to think about that kid never playing football again.
Bottom line: Additional trained medical staff is essential to spell exhausted and overwhelmed medical personnel barely holding on. Painkillers, bandages, medical equipment and generators, tops the list of immediate needs, but the more catastrophic injuries will require substantially more. Hopefully Israel hasn't banned wheelchairs, prosthetics, crutches and glass eyes from their list of items allowed into Gaza. Although that would truly be inhuman, we are talking about the Israelis. Podcast Below
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