Media Review Network calls on South Africa’s medical institutions and health care workers to not ignore the fate of Kamal Adwan Hospital

28 October 2024

Kamal Adwan Hospital, one of the last functioning hospitals in northern Gaza, has been reduced to waste following relentless raids and bombings by the settler colonial regime's terrorist army. 

In its latest update, Al Jazeera reports that the medical facility is in disarray after it was raided and shelled amid Israel’s three-week offensive in the north, with a top Gaza Health Ministry official urging the World Health Organization (WHO) to evacuate the wounded from the hospital considered a lifeline for people in northern Gaza.

“The smell of death has spread around the hospital,” Marwan al-Hams, director of field hospitals at Gaza’s Health Ministry, told Al Jazeera, adding that the Israeli forces destroyed the hospital’s medical supplies during their raid to prevent the medics from saving the wounded.
 
Al Jazeera’s Tareq Abu Azzoum reporting from Deir el-Balah in central Gaza said that the Israeli forces caused widespread damage to the pharmaceutical warehouse and the ICU.
 
“Everyone knows that Kamal Adwan Hospital is considered a medical lifeline for the two-thirds of Palestinians in northern Gaza.”
 
In an update on this fast-moving story, Middle East Monitor reports that Director-General of the World Health Organisation Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus posted on X: “Since this morning’s reports of a raid of Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern #Gaza, we have lost touch with the personnel there. This development is deeply disturbing given the number of patients being served and people sheltering there.”
 
Ghebreyesus explained: “Prior to this, @WHO and partners managed to reach Kamal Adwan Hospital late last night, amid hostilities in the vicinity, and transferred 23 patients and 26 caregivers to Al-Shifa Hospital.”
 
“Kamal Adwan Hospital has been overflowing with close to 200 patients – a constant stream of horrific trauma cases. It is also full of hundreds of people seeking shelter,” he added.
 
United Nations as well as the International Criminal Court cannot claim ignorance about the fact that North Gaza has been under an intense military operation with thousands of civilians said to be cut off from humanitarian aid and protection, amid dwindling food and other life sustaining essentials.
 
It is no surprise therefore to hear the UN's human rights chief Volker Turk warn that "One of the darkest moments of the Gaza conflict is unfolding in the north of the Strip". 
 
“The Israeli military is effectively subjecting an entire population to bombing, siege and risk of starvation, as well as being forced to choose between mass displacement and being trapped in an active conflict zone,” he added, warning that Israel’s actions could amount to crimes against humanity.
 
Issued by Iqbal Jassat, Executive Member, Media Review Network, SA, 28 October 2024