NHS medics volunteering in Gaza warn of catastrophic collapse of healthcare system

NHS medics volunteering in Gaza have warned of the “catastrophic” collapse of the healthcare system one year into the war, as they described trying to treat the wounded and sick amid shortages of everything from paracetamol to surgical gauze.

Nurses and doctors working in field hospitals run by the British medical charity UK-Med have called for immediate delivery of supplies and for health workers and facilities to be protected, as the world marks the grim milestone of one year at war.

UK-Med, which runs two facilities in the centre of Gaza, has treated 200,000 people and sees around 1,400 patients a day, but is struggling with overwhelming demand and a punishing lack of supplies.

“I have never seen such a lack of access to basic items needed to be a doctor – even gloves. We don’t have gloves,” said Claire Frost, an NHS general practitioner from Cardigan in Wales, who leads the UK-Med field hospital in Deir al-Balah.

She described the teams scrambling to deal with mass casualty events like a bombing of Al-Mawasi in July just 400m from their second field hospital facility. Al-Mawasi is earmarked by Israel as a so-called “humanitarian zone” and home to hundreds of thousands of displaced civilians.

“We received 26 casualties, including two toddlers who needed multiple amputations. As a medical professional, I’ve seen children suffering from things that they should never suffer,” she added.

She explained that people with chronic conditions, such as hypertension and diabetes, had no access to their medications, quickly turning them into emergency cases. They run a weekly malnutrition clinic where the number of starving people is rising. Nine-month-old babies look like newborns because they are so thin.

“With winter around the corner, we are worried about a surge in communicable diseases like respiratory tract infections and waterborne diseases. We just don’t have enough antibiotics,” Dr Frost said.

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Paula Tobin, an NHS senior nurse from Plymouth who volunteered during the Ebola crisis, the war in Ukraine, and the major earthquake in Turkey, said the war in Gaza was the worst crisis she had witnessed in terms of its impact on civilians and the longevity of the conflict.

She now leads the UK-Med surgical field hospital in Al-Mawasi, which has a 24-hour operating theatre, an emergency department, a maternity unit and a primary healthcare clinic, serving as a lifeline for people in the area.

“I work in a major trauma unit in the UK, and I’m used to seeing trauma, but the impact on women and children here is what I personally struggle with,” she told The Independent from Gaza.

She described mothers who were so malnourished that they were unable to breastfeed, yet there is no baby formula available.

“We have a severe lack of supplies. We don’t have basic analgesia left,” she said. “We lack antibiotics, basic painkillers, paracetamol, and skin creams… even basic supplies like bandages and sterile gauze,” she added, before saying that they have had to improvise with bandages for surgery.

“The patients that come in with blast injuries already have dirt and sand embedded in their wounds – those wounds are breaking down because we don’t have antibiotics.”

Since last October, Israel has launched one of the deadliest and most destructive military campaigns in recent global history, alongside a siege, in retaliation for the bloody attacks by Hamas on 7 October last year.

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Around 1,200 people were killed in those attacks, with another 251 taken hostage, according to Israeli estimates. Since then, Israel’s offensive in Gaza has killed nearly 42,000 people, the majority of whom are women and children, according to the Palestinian health ministry. The offensive has displaced almost the entire population of 2.3 million, pushed areas into famine according to the UN, and led to a case brought by South Africa at the UN's top court, accusing Israel of genocide. Israel vehemently denies the allegations.

In tandem, Israel has been locked in an escalating conflict with the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah and Iran, killing more than 2,000 people in Lebanon and displacing 1.2 million more throughout the last year. The majority have been killed or displaced in the past two weeks as Israel has stepped up airstrikes on Hezbollah and sent troops into southern Lebanon.

Israel denies deliberately targeting the healthcare system and says it is doing all it can to get aid into Gaza. It has accused Hamas of using hospitals as command bases – a claim the Palestinian authorities have denied.

The World Health Organisation has repeatedly warned of the “systematic dismantling” of Gaza’s healthcare system, reporting that health workers, medical facilities, ambulances and paramedic teams faced bombing.

The WHO’s latest report, from September, said that only 17 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals are partially functioning, while at least 765 people have been killed in more than 500 attacks on the healthcare system.

The UN’s humanitarian office Ocha said on Monday that Israel has also blocked humanitarian access into and within Gaza, where looting was on the rise, crippling aid operations. “As a result, a weakened population is left to battle disease, hunger and death,” it said.

The CEO of UK-Med, David Wightwick, who spent six months in Gaza establishing the field hospitals, called the war in Gaza “the largest, most intensive, and most demanding humanitarian deployment in the 30-year history of UK-Med”.

The charity has so far rotated 30 NHS medics into Gaza, who are supported by 570 Palestinian colleagues, and is fundraising to support more NHS medics going in.

An NHS anaesthetist from Lancashire, Dr Matthew Newport, has deployed four times with UK-Med, and said he had seen more violent deaths in Gaza in the last few months “than I have in the last 10 years in the NHS”.

Both Dr Frost and Nurse Tobin said their Palestinian colleagues are trying to treat the wounded and sick, despite being impacted by the war themselves.

On Friday, Israel issued a new evacuation order and three of Dr Frost’s staff had to rush home, pack up their belongings, and try to find somewhere to live.

She said they had a message for the outside world: “The situation is extremely desperate. Humanitarian access and supplies remain severely restricted. The health system has practically collapsed. The safety of health workers and our facilities is paramount to enable the delivery of lifesaving medical care in Gaza.”

Dr Frost said: “UK-Med is calling on all parties in the conflict to protect and respect healthcare workers and hospitals. The violence must end as soon as possible.”