“There Is No Triage”
  June 11, 2024 Evening, Meteor readers, Today could be the last time you hear from me. Somewhat kidding! But I am signing off for the rest of the week to go camping and put that whole “bear versus man” thing to the test in the wilds of New Jersey. Turns out my midlife crisis hobby is just Outdoors.  In today’s newsletter, we look at Gaza’s decimated healthcare system. Plus, Justice Alito says the quiet part out loud—into a tape recorder. 🐻🐻🐻, Shannon Melero  WHAT’S GOING ONGaza hospitals in crisis: Over the weekend, when the IDF massacred 274 Palestinians in Nuseirat refugee camp while extracting four Israeli hostages, the situation at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital—one of the last remaining hospitals still operating in Gaza—became exponentially worse with “hundreds” of patients and doctors pushed to the brink due to a lack of supplies and fuel to run generators. “Even the gloves we need for operations are missing,” Ali Abu Qorma, a surgeon, told The Daily Beast. (Multiple ceasefire deals that would have released the hostages peacefully have been rejected, most recently by Israel on May 7, but the U.S. is hoping the country will accept a proposal just passed by the UN Security Council, which Hamas has already verbally accepted.) The conditions at Al-Aqsa particularly concern public health experts, since 84 percent of all medical facilities in Gaza have been damaged or leveled by Israel’s ongoing bombardment. Images coming out of the hospital are similar to those across Gaza: burned and bleeding patients, mostly children, lying on the floor in over-capacity medical wards where hundreds of refugees were already taking shelter. In a voice note sent to Doctors Without Borders, Karin Huster, a medical coordinator working in the hospital, said, “It’s just one of those moments when you don’t think about the chaos that is happening. There is no system, there is no triage. You roll up your sleeves, you put a ton of stuff in your pockets, and you do the best you can…But there is nothing, nothing at all, that justifies what I saw today. Nothing.” And as is almost always the case in conflict zones, the conditions across Gaza are even worse for women and girls, according to Dr. Natalia Kanem, executive director of the UN Population Fund. “We are facing a situation where women are delivering babies by cesarean section without anesthesia because there’s no energy, there’s no generator, the medicines are running out,” she told Al-Jazeera. Meanwhile, the UN’s World Food Program has paused its aid shipments in Central Gaza after the IDF “rocketed” two of its warehouses in Nuseirat. Cindy McCain, executive director of WFP, told The Washington Post that the IDF’s actions “have made things a lot more dangerous.” (The Palestinian Red Crescent has also said that soldiers entered Nuseirat while hiding inside humanitarian aid trucks, which the IDF denies.) In March, an IPC report estimated that 1.1 million Gazans were struggling with catastrophic hunger; by July, the entire population could be experiencing full-blown famine. To help, you can donate to the Palestinian Red Crescent Society here and Doctors Without Borders here. The Palestine Children’s Relief Fund focuses on humanitarian aid to children in particular, and you can donate here. AND:
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