Doctors in Gaza are fainting while trying to save their starving patients

CNN

3 days ago

Dr. Mohammad Saqer is hungry. So ravenous that he sometimes struggles to keep upright while treating his desperately ill patients at the Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza. On Thursday, he fainted while working at the ward. And then, moments after recovering, he returned to finish his 24-hour shift.
'My fellow doctors caught me before I collapsed and gave me IV fluids and (sugar). There was a foreign doctor who had a packet of Tango juice and prepared it for me. I drank it immediately,' Dr. Saqer told CNN. 'I am not diabetic – this was hunger. There's no sugar. There's no food.'
As Gaza's hunger crisis deepens, the very people who are trying to keep the gravely malnourished population alive are suffering along with their patients.
Dr. Saqer said the number of his colleagues who have fainted at work has risen rapidly in recent days, with doctors and nurses across multiple departments collapsing from hunger and exhaustion.
Dr. Fadel Naim, a surgeon and the director of the Al-Ahli Al-Arabi hospital, in the north of the Strip, told CNN that many of his colleagues have also fallen over from hunger and malnutrition, including two who collapsed during surgeries this week.
'Since I am the director of the hospital, one of my tasks is to find food for the staff … we aren't getting enough food. If we have one meal a day, we are lucky, and most people (at the hospital) are working 24/7 – it's very hard to continue like that,' Dr. Naim said.
The firsthand testimonies of the two doctors tally with what a group of more than 100 international humanitarian organizations said earlier this week, when they warned that they were 'witnessing their own colleagues and partners waste away before their eyes.'
Dr. Saqer is the director of nursing at the Nasser Hospital, but like other medics there, he gets just one small plate of rice to eat each day.
'We are physically drained, and we are required to treat patients who are equally drained. Exhausted people treating other exhausted people, the hungry treating the hungry, the weak treating the weak,' he said.
The ward treating malnourished children at Nasser Hospital where Dr. Saqer works is full of babies that are so skinny, they no longer look human.
The bones in their faces, spines and ribcages appear to be protruding from under their skin. Their long, thin limbs resemble limp noodles, barely moving.
A CNN video filmed on Friday shows many of them crying, but some are so weak they are no longer even capable of that. They just lie in their cots or on mattresses placed on the floor and observe the world around them with eyes that look enormous on their emaciated faces. Several have bloated stomachs – the tell-tale sign of malnutrition.
The mothers desperately trying to feed them are skinny themselves. They too look exhausted and terrified.
One of them, Yasmin Abu Sultan, spoke to CNN as she was trying to feed her daughter Mona with a syringe.
'She needs fruits. We need to feed her vegetables but there's nothing … mothers used to breastfeed. We didn't rely on formula, now most mothers depend on it due to lack of food. It's impossible for women to breastfeed without food,' she said.
Another mother, Najah Hashem Darbakh, said that while the doctors gave her daughter Sila Darbakh supplements, there was no formula available for her. She needs the milk because she is suffering from chronic diarrhea and dehydration.
'I told them I need milk. They said, you can go and try to get milk yourself if you can, but here in this room alone, four children have died from malnutrition. I'm terrified my daughter will be the fifth.'
Yet at least babies Mona and Sila Darbakh are in a hospital where they can get some medical attention – albeit not nearly enough.
Another mother who spoke to CNN, Hidaya Al Mtawwaq, lives in a tent near the Al-Ahli Al-Arabi hospital in Gaza City with her son Mohammad. He is three years old and weighs just six kilograms (13 lbs) — down from nine kilograms (20lbs) just a few months ago.
'He can't stand on his feet, and he can't move like before, all because of the famine and lack of food,' she told CNN.
Al Mtawwaq has taken Mohammad to several hospitals and has always been told the same — he urgently needs nutritional supplements that are not available in Gaza. All she can get for his is a little bit of milk — and even that is becoming extremely difficult.
Al Mtawwaq said her husband has been killed in the war. 'I struggle just to afford a can of milk for him. I'm truly exhausted. Exhausted, exhausted.'
All of Gaza's 2.1 million people are now food insecure, without reliable access to enough affordable, nutritious and healthy food, the UN said this week. According to Gaza's health ministry, 900,000 children are going hungry, and 70,000 already show signs of malnutrition.
The situation is worsening by the hour. Doctors Without Borders said Thursday that the rates of severe malnutrition in children under five in its clinics have tripled in the last two weeks alone.
Dr. Naim said children born during the war are especially vulnerable to health problems caused by malnutrition.
'Those who are two or three years old have grown up in unhealthy conditions, with weakened immunity and allergies. They suffer from problems in brain development and motor function, and these issues will persist into the future, even if they survive the hunger,' he told CNN, adding that he feels that Gaza has been abandoned by the world.
'As peaceful Palestinian people, we are being collectively punished … (US) President (Donald) Trump must take a strong stance, especially as he claims to be a man of peace and committed to achieving peace.'
Like all of his colleagues, Dr. Saqer said he keeps thinking about his family while treating his patients. Because in Gaza, doctors can never be sure that the next casualty coming through their door won't be someone dear to them.
'We are working, sadly, with our minds on our families, who are starving,' he told CNN, adding that when his wife told him this week that there was no food, he went to the market, trying to buy some.
'Flour is now priced like gold in Gaza. I bought two kilograms (4.4 lb), just enough for three days, for 310 shekels ($92),' he said.
According to the International Monetary Fund, the average daily wage in Gaza was just under $13 per day in 2021, the latest available data.
Humanitarian organizations have long been warning about the risk of famine in Gaza. The territory has always been dependent on humanitarian aid, but the flows of food and other necessities have been severely restricted by Israel following the October 7, 2023 terror attacks that Hamas launched from Gaza.
There have been periods during the war when no food was allowed into Gaza and while aid is currently trickling in, there isn't enough of it and even the little that does get through is not reaching those who need it the most.
Finding food is becoming increasingly dangerous. The UN said this week that more than 1,000 people have been killed by Israeli forces while seeking food since late May, when the controversial Israel- and US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, began operating.
The director general of the World Health Organization Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Wednesday that Palestinians in Gaza are suffering from man-made 'mass starvation' because of Israel's decision to block aid.
Israel has rejected the accusation and earlier this week, Israeli Minister of Heritage Amihai Eliyahu went as far as claiming that 'there is no hunger in Gaza' – despite the overwhelming evidence. Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid denounced Eliyahu's remarks as a 'moral attack and public diplomacy disaster.'
Dr. Saqer said he had not seen his wife and children in three months, because he is needed at the hospital non-stop. Casualties can arrive any minute of any day, so he needs to be nearby even during his very limited down-time.
The situation in Gaza is now 'beyond what the human mind can grasp,' he added. Amid the carnage and suffering, the doctors at Nasser have only each other to turn to.
'We try to encourage each other, reminding one another that this profession is rooted in humanity, and under no circumstances can we abandon our duty or the oath we took,' Dr. Saqer said.