FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

October 16th, 2023

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Samantha Kupferman, +1 202-215-9620

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MedGlobal Calls to Halt the Deleterious Evacuation of Patients in Gaza

Evacuating 3000 Patients from North Gaza to the South is Near Impossible and Will Cause Death of Innocent Patients 

GAZA CITY – MedGlobal’s team of physicians and medical personnel remain on the ground providing emergency medical aid and supplies for the people of Gaza amid Israel’s abrupt and forced evacuation of northern Gaza. MedGlobal is one of the last international NGOs still operating under these dire conditions and its team has refused to abandon patients at the Kamal Adwan hospital amid the evacuation. Other hospitals also refused to evacuate including the largest medical complex that has about 700 patients, many of them are critically ill. 

“Even in the US, it is impossible to evacuate patients safely during disasters as we have seen after Hurricane Katrina. Patients will die during evacuation including children on ventilators and newborns in incubators,” said Dr. Zaher Sahloul, president of MedGlobal. “It is logistically impossible to evacuate 3,000 patients and 4,000 healthcare workers to southern Gaza.”

About 600,000 fled in a mass exodus from northern Gaza after Israel’s military instructed 1.1 million Palestinians to evacuate to the southern part of the besieged strip ahead of an expected ground invasion. The U.N. warned that evacuating half of the crowded Gaza’s population would be calamitous, and urged Israel to reverse the unprecedented directive. 

“We have 170 patients and 200 medical staff in our hospital in northern Gaza. We refuse to evacuate because it is not safe for our patients and we can’t find beds for them in the south of Gaza,” said Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, MedGlobal’s lead physician in Gaza. “ We have five critically ill children, and four newborns in incubators who will die during transportation in the midst of a catastrophic situation.”

Hospitals in southern Gaza do not have enough beds to accommodate patients if they are evacuated from the north. All of the 800 beds in the south are occupied by critically injured patients, most of them are women and children. 

Since October 7th and the escalation of the crisis in Gaza, Medglobal has locally procured medical supplies, fuel, and medicine and distributed them to 11 hospitals in Gaza. 63,000 liters of diesel fuel for electric generators have been procured and sent to these hospitals, allowing them to operate for at least 1 month each. MedGlobal has also provided daily meals (breakfast, lunch, and dinner) to doctors, nurses and staff in 5 hospitals and to nearly 3,500 internally displaced persons.

Since 2018, MedGlobal has donated 6 million dollars worth of medical supplies, and medical equipment, in addition to sending diverse volunteer medical teams to help build healthcare capacity in Gaza. MedGlobal’s local team has been providing primary and secondary healthcare by supporting hospitals, clinics, dialysis centers, a wound care clinic, elderly health, nursing and doctors training, reproductive health, and mobile clinics in partnership with the local community.

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MedGlobal is a humanitarian nonprofit organization that provides emergency response and health programs to build resilience among vulnerable communities around the world.