In the corridors of a hospital in the Gaza Strip where injured children are being treated, Doctor Khaled al-Saidani, a Palestinian pediatrician, advances with a determined step. However, he had one of his legs amputated after being injured and now wears a prosthesis.
“I was injured by shrapnel and as I am diabetic, things got worse, and we had to amputate my leg,” Khaled al-Saidani told AFP between two consultations. The doctor says he lost his right leg during an Israeli air attack on his house last year. “Following this, I started wearing a prosthesis, which is tiring,” he says. “But I am able to move and walk.”
With his stethoscope around his neck, Khaled al-Saidani carefully examines each child, displaying big smiles and handing out warm handshakes. As he examines one of his young patients, intubated and wearing bandages on his hands, the latter stares back at him, seeming to wonder what happened to the doctor’s leg. At the al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, located in Deir el-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip, the vast majority of patients are being treated for injuries caused by the war which has lasted for more than fifteen months between the Israeli army and Hamas fighters.
The war, triggered by the unprecedented attack of the Palestinian Islamist movement on Israel on October 7, 2023, has wreaked havoc among caregivers and in health establishments. A recent United Nations expert report, citing figures provided by the Hamas government’s Health Ministry, highlights that at least 1,057 Palestinian health workers have been killed in Gaza since the start of the war.
On Wednesday, the international umbrella federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent organizations deplored the “incessant attacks on health facilities in the Gaza Strip”, which, it added, prevent Gazans from access the care they need. The Israeli army, which has regularly attacked hospitals in the territory, claims that these buildings are used by the Islamist movement as rear bases and that it uses them to hide weapons or fighters, which Hamas denies.
Most of the 36 hospitals in the Gaza Strip have been put out of service and those that are still partially functioning say they are struggling to treat patients as they lack everything. Doctors like Khaled al-Saidani continue to provide care as best they can to the endless stream of patients. “Even though the prosthesis tires me, I feel good while working, and that is why I decided to return to my activity,” explains Doctor Saidani.
His patients and their loved ones praise the efforts of the pediatrician, like the mother of Mira Hamid, a young girl hospitalized for kidney disease. “Despite the amputation of his leg, doctor Khaled al-Saidani follows his patients and provides them with care, God bless his hard work,” she testifies.
