The first Spaniard to escape from Gaza, Raúl Incertis, managed to escape from hell on November 1. This 40-year-old Valencian anesthetist is already at home in Valencia. It has left behind a horror of bombs, blood and thousands of devastated lives. Trapped since the beginning of the war in the Strip, where he worked at the Al Adwa hospital for Doctors Without Borders (MSF), he had never experienced anything like this until now despite being used to working in conflict areas (he has recently been in Afghanistan and in Yemen).
The situation in the Strip is “catastrophic” and “dangerous,” according to David Cantero, coordinator of Doctors Without Borders in Palestine. The humanitarian emergency caused by the war is about to make the leap to a situation of serious health emergency due to the possible outbreak of epidemics and all types of diseases, given the lack of drinking water, the absence of garbage collection and the overcrowded conditions. and malnutrition of more than two million people with no escape from Israel’s attacks, according to MSF.
This Monday, Doctors Without Borders organized a telematic press conference with Raúl Incertis and David Cantero so that they could narrate their experience and the situation that Gaza is going through.
The anesthetist, with astonishing serenity, explained what his 25 days in Gaza were like under the bombs and the terrible health situation in the country, especially in hospitals, where doctors are forced to disconnect some patients who need external equipment to survive to save energy and thus save other sick people, since the electricity from the generators does not reach everyone. “Doctors are being forced to wean some people off mechanical ventilation depending on which patient has the best chance of surviving, the condition of their injuries or their age,” Incertis explained.
Health centers are in a dramatic situation due to the lack of electricity, materials and medicines and because Israel also considers them targets because, it alleges, they are also used by Hamas. As the anesthetist says, “the vast majority of the wounded who arrive suffer burns from the bombs and we don’t have bandages.” In the case of this type of wound, “dead tissue must be removed and the area cleaned from time to time, which must be done without painkillers or bandages, which is very dangerous because infections appear.” As Cantero adds, the lack of alcohol is forcing in some cases to “disinfect wounds with vinegar.”
MSF explains that there are 16 health centers in northern Gaza and almost half of them are no longer functioning. The hospitals of Al Shifa, the most important of all, and Al Adwa, where Incertis worked, have turned off their main generators due to lack of fuel and are resorting to small secondary generators, which only allow them to maintain the most critical equipment.
So far, at least 150 health workers have been killed, “a number unprecedented in other conflicts,” explains Cantero. The 22 foreign workers from Doctors Without Borders have already been evacuated, but not the almost 300 local workers, who continue to risk their lives in Gaza to help their compatriots.
Raúl Incertis arrived in Gaza on October 1, just a week before the Israeli offensive began, with a “relatively simple mission”: to perform scheduled orthopedic and reconstructive surgeries on the legs of many Gazans who came to the wall that separates Israel. from Gaza to throw stones at the soldiers. They responded by shooting at their ankles “with special bullets to cause as much damage as possible and mutilate them.”
After several days in the Al Adwa hospital, he was free on Friday the 6th and took a walk along the Strip beach: “Calm, tranquility, a very beautiful place.” The next day, the apocalypse broke out: “a constant outrage since Saturday,” October 7, the day of the Hamas attack on Israel.
After the war broke out, Incertis spent three more days in the apartment shared by several Doctors Without Borders workers. On Tuesday, they were transferred to the basement of the UN building so that they would be protected from the continued bombing.
“I thought that the worst night of all had been from Monday the 9th to Tuesday the 10th, but each night surpassed the previous one, with endless bombings.” As Incertis already told EL MUNDO before leaving Gaza, he will never forget “the terrifying screams of the children” in each bombing. “The whole building shakes and you feel your head shaking, your whole body vibrating” with each bomb.
MOBILE MESSAGES
Israel usually warns the population that a bombing is going to occur in a specific area “through text messages on their cell phones and five minutes in advance, in the best of cases,” he adds. In this way, those who do not have a cell phone or their phone does not work are not alerted. “Also, imagine what it’s like to empty a five- or six-story building full of large families, like the families in Gaza are, in just five minutes,” she said. “Many people don’t find out and many others don’t have time.”
Sometimes, the Army warns of a bombing, the population evacuates the area and finally the attack does not occur, which represents “a strategy of psychological terror.”
After Israel demanded that the population leave northern Gaza and travel to the South, Incertis and other workers from international organizations were sent to refugee camps in the south of the Strip.
“The first day we arrived at the camp, which was a Vocational Training Institute, there were 300 of us refugees. The next day, we were 10,000; and three days later, 35,000 people,” he says. The Spanish doctor counted the number of toilets there were: 12, which in a short time had to serve those 35,000 refugees “and the chemical toilets did not arrive, at least until we left.”
BOMBINGS IN THE SOUTH
Incertis and thousands of people had fled to the South because the Israeli authorities demanded it. However, as he said, “on the night of October 26 to 27, 65% of the deaths in the entire Strip were concentrated in the South; everyone wondered why they told us to go to the South if the bombings there were also going to be produced.”
The health situation in Gaza is beginning to be very worrying: “There are already many children with diarrhea, gastroenteritis and respiratory diseases; yesterday I learned of the first cases of chickenpox,” Cantero highlighted. “Anything can happen from now on in terms of epidemics,” which is why he has made “a huge wake-up call” to the international community to avoid it.
