WHO Director General Warns Al Shifa Hospital Patients Could Die If Not Evacuated Immediately

Israeli troops carried out operations at Al Shifa Hospital. (Source: Israel Defense Forces)

JAKARTA - The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) said that the destruction of Al Shifa Hospital in the Gaza Strip, Palestine due to the Israeli attack, meant that patients there needed to be evacuated immediately or they would die.

Israeli forces caused extensive damage to the hospital complex, having withdrawn from Al Shifa Hospital on Monday following a two-week operation that left hundreds of militants dead and hundreds more detained.

"People requiring medical evacuation will increase and medical evacuation is already progressing slowly," said WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, as reported by Reuters, April 4.

"People will die because they don't get good service from Shifa or because the evacuation is slow, because they can't be evacuated," he continued.

Israel says it killed hundreds of Hamas fighters based there. Hamas and medical staff denied any fighters were present.

"The evacuation process must be accelerated," he said.

"Otherwise, we will lose a lot of people. We will lose a lot of lives," he warned.

Only 10 of Gaza's 36 hospitals are still partially functioning, Tedros said.

He also said WHO was trying to visit the site where Al Shifa stood to talk to staff and see what could be saved, but the situation on the ground looked "catastrophic".

Meanwhile, WHO Representative for the West Bank and Gaza Richard Peeperkorn said the destruction of Al Shifa Hospital would cause "thousands of people to lose health services."

He said patients had to be transferred to other health facilities in the war-torn northern region of Palestine, which was already struggling to function.

"We must realize that the health services provided in Gaza are inadequate," he explained.

"The current health system is weak as we often say. It is not enough. It is not complete," he stressed.

It is known that Al Shifa, the largest hospital in the Gaza Strip before the war with 750 beds and many operating rooms, was one of the few health facilities partially operating in northern Gaza before the Israeli attack.