Live updates: Follow the latest on Israel-Gaza
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.
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Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
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COMPANY PROFILE
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MATCH INFO
Uefa Champions League semi-finals, second leg:
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Globalization and its Discontents Revisited
Joseph E. Stiglitz
W. W. Norton & Company
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
