American doctor who worked in Gaza describes dire humanitarian crisis civilians there face

Geoff Bennett:

More than 60,000 Palestinians have been wounded during the Israeli air and ground campaigns.

In a moment, Nick Schifrin speaks with an American doctor who's just returned from Gaza. But, first, he looks at the state of medical care there.

And a warning, Some of the following images and descriptions are disturbing.

Nick Schifrin:

In Gaza's hospitals today, suffering too terrible to name. A mother hoping to find her son has just found him in a white body bag.

They pray for him at the European Hospital in the southern city of Khan Yunis three days after he left his home looking for food, never to return.

Ibtisam Mohammed Gabr Al-Qurra was told her son Abdullah was killed in an Israeli airstrike. He was buried so quickly, his gravestone is a cinder block.

Ibtisam Mohammed Gabr Al-Qurra, Mother of Deceased (through interpreter): I'm hurting like a burning blaze. I told my husband, let's pray for Abdullah. He will come back. But it was my last goodbye for him. May his soul rest in peace.

Nick Schifrin:

At Gaza's largest hospital, Al Shifa, the wounded are rushed in. And there are scenes of desperation. This man, wounded, was brought into a hospital where triage is on the floor and treatment is often without anesthetic.

None of Gaza's 36 hospitals is fully functional and fewer than half are even operating. Now it's the area outside Nasser Hospital back in the south where fighting today and over the last week forced the displaced who sheltered at the hospital grounds to flee. The U.N. says Nasser Hospital is operating at double capacity. But Israel says Hamas used the hospital grounds this week to fire mortars at Israeli soldiers.

Col. Elad Tsuri, Israeli Defense Forces:

It uses the hospital as a human shield.

Nick Schifrin:

Israel accuses Hamas of systematically using hospitals to hide. Israeli commanders have shown journalists miles of tunnels underneath hospitals. Last week, an Israeli animation of Indonesian Hospital showed what Israel called a network of Hamas tunnels underneath, and, just next to Indonesian Hospital, cars taken by Hamas militants from Israel on October the 7th.

Col. Elad Tsuri:

We find another route that goes north from the hospital, so they can — after they attack or do something, they can go through the tunnel in the city.

Nick Schifrin:

But Gazan patients inside the hospitals are often powerless. Last week, Al-Aqsa Hospital's generators ran out of fuel and the incubators ran only on battery. There are only three doctors left after international organizations evacuated their staff because of nearby fighting.

One of those evacuated was Dr. Seema Jilani of the International Rescue Committee.

Dr. Seema Jilani, International Rescue Committee:

That feels very close. There is no morphine left. I have always told myself there's not much we can do in medicine, but we can treat pain. And it's no longer true anymore. So we cannot even offer any comfort here. There is no death with dignity when you're lying on the ground of an emergency room in Gaza.

Nick Schifrin:

And Dr. Seema Jilani now joins me from New York.

Dr. Jilani, thank you so much.

We just heard you say no death with dignity. What have you seen that made you say that?

Dr. Seema Jilani:

In my first three hours of working at Al-Aqsa Hospital, I treated a 1-year-old boy with a bloody diaper, and his right arm and right leg had been blown off. There was no leg below the diaper. He was bleeding into his chest.

I treated him on the ground because there were no structures and no beds available. And when the orthopedic surgeon came to wrap his stumps up to stop the bleeding, I would have imagined in the U.S. this would have been a straightforward case that went immediately to the operating room because of the severity, as a stat case.

And, instead, the impossible choices inflicted on the doctors of Gaza have made it such that he wasn't the emergency of the day. There was a waiting list, and the operating room was already full with other, more pressing cases. And so I asked myself, what's more pressing than a 1-year-old without an arm, a leg, and who's bleeding into his chest and choking on his blood?

And that will tell you a little bit about the scale of devastation that the people of Gaza are suffering.

Nick Schifrin:

You're a pediatrician. What does it say that your expertise is needed at this moment in Gaza?

Dr. Seema Jilani:

I have worked in war zones for several years, if not decades.

And I shouldn't be useful in a war zone, because I would expect that the survivor — the injured and war wounded would be young men. Instead, I'm disturbed to tell you that I was extremely useful in Gaza. At one point, we were resuscitating five patients from the brink of death in the code room, and four of them were children under the age of 15.

That shouldn't be the case in the war. I shouldn't be useful as a pediatrician.

Nick Schifrin:

What moment, which patient will you most remember?

Dr. Seema Jilani:

There was an 11-year-old child who was brought in, and she was burnt so much that her face was charred and black. Her arms were flexed and immobile, and we did not have any information or contact information for parents, whether they were alive or dead.

The emergency room was permeated with the smell of burnt flesh. And I just kept thinking that this is one of so many of a generation of orphans that are going to be born into Gaza burnt and amputated and with no life to speak of, no access to services, no family members. And it will stay with me for all my days.

Nick Schifrin:

While you were there, another of your audio recordings, you questioned whether you were making a difference.

Looking back, do you think that your time in Gaza made a difference?

Dr. Seema Jilani:

I do. I do think — we were there to support the health care staff, who's on the brink of collapse.

The doctors were showing up having been forcibly evacuated already, not once, not twice, but somewhere four to five times. So they're scavenging for food and water and shelter for their families and showing up the next day in scrubs and with a stethoscope in hand and valiantly, bravely seeing patients.

And, one day, there was a gentleman quietly sobbing in the doctor's area, and we asked what had happened. He pronounced a colleague dead overnight. And he — I said: "Should we leave?"

And he said: "No, please stay and just see the patients today. I can't face them."

And so I do think that us being there shows a solidarity and a support of the Palestinian staff. And they need a break, which we need a sustained cease-fire for this to be able to occur, for services to be able to be provided to people.

We also saw many, many patients to try and empty the emergency room. The emergency rooms and hospitals have become de facto shelters, so try to continue to increase patient flow. And, at the end of the day, it's the intangible. It's holding hands with a dying patient. It's holding the mother whose legs give out when you tell her that her — that she has to bury her child.

That's what we're there for, to serve people that are suffering.

Nick Schifrin:

You're back in the U.S. You're in New York. What do you want world leaders to know, whether in New York or Washington, D.C.?

Dr. Seema Jilani:

World leaders need to acknowledge the scale, magnitude and severity of the human suffering that is happening on the ground.

We cannot look away anymore. And there needs to be a sustained cease-fire in order for us to be able to provide basic human services and dignity to the people of Gaza. And they have a voice and they have power to make that happen.

Nick Schifrin:

Israel says Hamas uses hospitals as cover for tunnels. Did you see any evidence of any kind of militant activity in or around the hospital?

Dr. Seema Jilani:

I did not see any evidence to suggest that.

And the IRC would never work in a hospital that would be used for those purposes and condones any violation of international humanitarian law.

Nick Schifrin:

What do you say to the Gazan doctors you worked with who you mentioned before who, of course, are not able to leave Gaza?

Dr. Seema Jilani:

My heart and my spirit remain with you. And I am doing everything I can to support your dignity and humanity, which we, sadly, have seemed to lost somewhere along the way.

Nick Schifrin:

Dr. Seema Jilani of the IRC, the International Rescue Committee, thank you so much.

Dr. Seema Jilani:

Thank you.