The healthcare system in Gaza has long served as the lifeline and final hope for its people. Even before the war, years of blockade and closed border crossings made access to treatment abroad nearly impossible. The people of Gaza depended almost entirely on local hospitals and the dedication of healthcare professionals working under extreme pressure. However, with the onset of war, this system was not just overwhelmed — it became a target. The Israeli military systematically destroyed major hospitals, including Al-Shifa, and killed over 1,300 healthcare and humanitarian workers. Among them were leading specialists like orthopedic surgeon Dr. Adnan Al-Borsh.
In this article, I want to shed light on the reality inside hospitals during the war. This war is unlike any before it longer, more brutal, and more destructive. Over 50,000 people have been killed, the majority of them women and children. Most of Gaza’s population has been forcibly displaced from their homes.
My personal experience
On a personal level, I worked as an emergency nurse at Al-Shifa Hospital from the first days of the war. The situation was far worse than anything I could have imagined. Dozens of injured people arrived all at once, many of them needing intensive care due to the scale of the explosions. What broke my heart most was the number of children an overwhelming, endless stream of small bodies. I was constantly fighting with myself: Where do I begin? Who can I save first?
These weren’t simple injuries. Sometimes we couldn’t even tell where the bleeding was coming from or how to start treating it. Children came in with missing limbs but still breathing, and others barely hanging on offered a faint chance of revival. But we lacked nearly everything: diagnostic tools, equipment, and even the most basic supplies. We did everything we could, but too often, we failed.
The ER looked like a pool of blood, hour after hour. We ran without rest. Injuries poured in like a waterfall. The smell of death filled the air and I can still remember it. It won’t leave my mind.
Children of Gaza are not like other children in the world
I can’t describe everything, but what haunted me most was the children’s suffering. I would sit alone and wonder: How will they go on? How can they play again with no arms or legs? Who will support them? Who will remind them to dream? I used to hear that “dreams have no limits,” but how can they dream when their futures were shattered by flames?
I wrapped children’s bodies with my own hands. I failed to save many. I hated telling parents their child had died. I hated myself when I saw mothers collapsing in grief. But we kept going, we had to.
I remember the desperate eyes of parents searching for their children in the chaos. Are they alive, or in the morgue? Some children arrived completely alone the sole survivors of their families. We didn’t know their names. We gave them numbers. Some had lost their memory from the trauma. Some never woke up again.
We are in a constant struggle
Day by day, the situation worsened. Supplies ran out. The wounded kept coming. We fell into a real famine. Hospitals were bombed. We feared for our own lives and our families outside were at risk too. I never imagined I’d search for my own family among the wounded, but many of my colleagues had.
One night, homes near my family were bombed. Communication was cut. The injured flooded in. I was frantic, searching among the wounded, among the bodies in the morgue. I couldn’t find them. I broke down and begged medics to let me search with them. They refused. Hours later, I found out my family had survived and fled to a displacement camp.
This is the reality for every health worker in Gaza today. No safety. No resources. Only exhaustion and the grief that they have endured over seventeen months of relentless war, killing, and bloodshed.
Even after leaving Gaza, my heart remains there. I speak with my colleagues daily. I once asked my colleague Najah, a student nurse, what the hardest moment was for her. I don’t know why I asked but her answer broke me.
She said after Al-Shifa was destroyed, patients were sent to small, ill-equipped hospitals. These patients arrived with multiple complex injuries but had no beds. They were treated on the floor, in unsafe environments. They were often beyond saving. Sometimes, they had to amputate limbs without anesthesia or sterile tools, just to give a patient a chance to live.
Najah told me she felt crushed. As a nursing student, she was still learning but she had no choice. She had to continue. She had to try. But she also carried the painful contradiction: she had been taught that healthcare is a human right yet all she saw was death, destruction, and forgotten humanity.
Faress is a master’s student studying at Trinity for a Masters in Global Health on a scholarship that was agreed upon following May’s 2024 encampment.
