Gaza's last major hospital faces imminent shutdown as fuel runs out

Al Shifa Hospital chief warns 'impossible situation' will cost lives as Israeli bombardment causes surge in patients

Injured Palestinians are carried into Al Shifa Hospital, in Gaza city. More than 350 people are being treated at the hospital. AP

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In the heart of war-torn Gaza, Al Shifa Hospital stands alone. It had been one of many medical centres providing treatment and hope during Israel's devastating bombardment of the enclave, but Kamal Adwan Hospital, the Indonesian Hospital and Al Awda Hospital have all been forced out of service.

Al Shifa is now the last fully operating major hospital in Gaza. But the burden of treating the injured could soon become too much.

“We are performing the work of all the hospitals that have collapsed,” Dr Mohammed Abu Salmiya, director of Al Shifa in Gaza city, told The National. “Our hospital was built to accommodate 140 beds. Today, we are treating over 350 patients. Most of them are lying in the corridors, in the courtyards, wherever there’s floor space.”

The surge in patients intensifies the pressure on a healthcare system on the brink. Inside Al Shifa, rooms meant for five patients now house more than 10. Emergency wards are overflowing. Every day, new patients, many injured in shootings near aid distribution sites, arrive in waves that overwhelm exhausted staff.

But it is not only space that is running out. Medication and surgical supplies are vanishing too.

“For more than three months, not a single pill has entered Gaza,” Dr Abu Salmiya said. “We are out of everything, drugs for surgery, painkillers, antibiotics, emergency medicine. We are treating patients without the tools we need. It is an impossible situation.”

The hospital now faces most serious shortage of all. "The fuel we have can only last for a few more days,” he added. “Yesterday, we received a small delivery, barely enough for three days.

"We have appealed to the World Health Organisation, to UNDP [UN Development Programme], to anyone who can hear us. Without fuel, we will lose everyone.”

The hospital desperately needs fuel to produce electricity. Without it, its generators will stop, killing patients.

“If the generators go silent, the 13 ICU patients on ventilators will die," Dr Abu Salmiya said. "Eighteen premature babies in incubators will die. The lab will shut down. And 350 kidney dialysis patients will have their treatment stopped. Their lives will be in immediate danger.”

The hospital will also be forced to suspend surgical services. “A hospital without power isn’t a hospital,” he added.

Across the enclave, humanitarian supplies including food and medicine are trickling in, while the healthcare system gasps for breath. But patients continue to seek help at Al Shifa.

“We’re watching people die not from wounds, but from the failure of the system around them,” Dr Abu Salmiya said. “It is no longer just war, it is the collapse of life itself.”

If the world does not act “the hospital will become a mass grave”, he added.