Listen to the audio.
This is Diaa Ostaz, a journalist based in Gaza, and I’m telling my experience while I was working [on] the health care system in the Gaza Strip. So, after nearly three years of war in Gaza, there is virtually no trace left of the health care system we knew before the war began.
From the very first day of the war in Gaza, the health care system began deteriorating day after day, until it reached a state of collapse. Before the war, there were 17 CT scanners across the Gaza Strip. Today, only four remain, two in the south and two in the north.
In northern Gaza, one of the remaining scanners broken down weeks ago, and this left the CT scanner at Al-Ahli Hospital in central Gaza City as the only one serving more than one million people living in the northern [region] of the strip.
But tragically, the hospital’s main generator has also broken down due to the shortage of the engine oil, which is currently not being allowed into Gaza. This has left the only remaining scanner out of service, leaving more than one million people without access to this essential and critical medical service.
It’s worth noting that the CT scanner was invented in 1971, and the CT shutdown at Al-Ahli Hospital means that Gaza’s health care system has effectively been pushed 55 years back in time. I visited Al-Ahli Hospital and many hospitals on the ground while I was working on this report.
The faces were pale, the wards were closed, and the corridors were dark. Everyone and every patient [were] seeking medical care, but unfortunately, Gaza’s deteriorating health care system is no longer able to meet the needs of its patients. This is the painful and the harsh reality in Gaza nearly after a year of the ceasefire was reached.
Read more about Gaza’s struggling health care system in “When a Generator Fails in Gaza,” a web exclusive in the September issue of ONE magazine.