Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza is one of the few remaining hubs for medical services in the area. Since Israel’s war in Gaza began, the hospital itself has also been a site of conflict. The Israeli military has accused Hamas of using the hospital as a base, which Gaza officials have denied, and has raided it repeatedly since Oct. 7, 2023. Parts of the facility have been damaged and destroyed from both direct attacks and bombardments occurring nearby. In late October, most of the staff members were detained or expelled by Israel’s military. Few doctors and nurses remain, and they care for sometimes upwards of 100 patients.

One of those doctors is the hospital’s current director, Hussam Abu Safyia, a pediatrician who is also the lead physician in Gaza for the humanitarian organization MedGlobal. In October 2023, he wrote a guest essay for Opinion describing the dire situation he was witnessing as casualties mounted during the first month of Israel’s offensive. Since then, the situation at the hospital has become much worse. Dr. Abu Safyia, who isn’t a surgeon, has had to operate on patients because of the lack of trained surgeons. He has had to decide who gets treatment and who doesn’t, given the dwindling resources available. And he has had to navigate a tense situation with the surrounding Israeli forces. He has had to do all this while grieving his son, who was killed in late October of this year and is buried on the hospital’s grounds. Last month, MedGlobal reported, Dr. Abu Safyia was wounded by shrapnel resulting from an Israeli airstrike and required surgery.

For a week in October and November, Dr. Abu Safyia sent Times Opinion audio and video messages describing the day-to-day situation at the hospital and the difficulties he and his remaining staff members face. Here are edited excerpts, most of them translated from the Arabic.

Oct. 30

Yesterday, for the first time in my life, I walked into the operating room to perform surgery, on the stomach of a 4-year-old child whose house was destroyed by bombing. He was bleeding a lot from his stomach, but I somehow managed to perform the operation, and thank God, I was able to save that child’s life.

We are working beyond our areas of specialization because we no longer have a qualified surgical team. We have called upon the world for protection for over 50 days but unfortunately there has been no response. I’m confounded by this world that claims to believe in humanity and democracy but does not respond. Not even the World Health Organization has any protection here.

The human mind cannot imagine all the death and body parts and blood that surround us around the clock. But it remains our responsibility to keep on providing humanitarian services.

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