WHO Says Options For Evacuating Patients From Gaza's Al-Shifa Hospital are Limited

Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza, Palestine. (Wikimedia Commons/Palestinian News & Information Agency (Wafa) in contact with APAimages)

JAKARTA - The UN is looking for ways to evacuate Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza, but options are limited due to security and logistical constraints, a senior World Health Organization (WHO) official said on Thursday.

One of the obstacles is that the Palestinian Red Crescent lacks fuel for ambulances in Gaza to evacuate patients, WHO Regional Emergency Director Rick Brennan told Reuters, as reported on November 17.

There were also insufficient ambulances available, said a spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross in Jerusalem.

Brennan said Egypt was open to sending its ambulances to Gaza to help evacuate people as long as guarantees of security and safe passage could be provided.

According to WHO, there are still about 600 patients including 27 in critical condition at Shifa hospital, which Israeli forces entered this week after a days-long siege, Brennan said.

"We are considering the possibility of a full medical evacuation, but there are a lot of concerns about security, there are a lot of logistical obstacles. Our options are somewhat limited, but we hope to have better news in the next 24 hours," he said.

Those given priority in the evacuation included critically ill babies and 36 newborns who had lost access to incubators, due to a lack of fuel to generate electricity, he said.

According to Brennan, evacuation plans were complicated because communications with hospitals were often lost.

"The idea is, we will get most of the patients within days or weeks from Shifa," he said.

"We were going to take most of them to hospitals in southern Gaza, but those hospitals are also overwhelmed so this is another complicating factor. The other option is of course to take some of them to Egypt," he explained.

Meanwhile, a WHO spokesperson said Al Arish Hospital in Egypt would likely be the first referral hospital and that it was working with the Egyptian government in "planning and building a comprehensive medical triage, stabilization, and evacuation system", including providing supplies additional medical and mental health.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry told a briefing in Egypt that efforts to provide medical aid to Palestinians from the Gaza Strip should be focused on the besieged coastal enclave.

"If we had the capacity to treat these people at Al-Shifa Hospital, we would not hesitate," he said.

Hospitals and other countries could accept more patients, a WHO spokesman said, including those with complex conditions such as cancer as well as those injured in the bombings.

The first evacuation of patients from Gaza to hospitals outside Egypt occurred on Wednesday, when 27 cancer patients were flown to Turkey from Al Arish.

The risk of security incidents during medical evacuations in Gaza remains high, an ICRC spokesperson said. He said an ICRC medical convoy delivering supplies to a separate hospital in Gaza came under fire last week.

"It is difficult to answer how this usually happens (medical evacuation in conflict), because this situation is not normal at all," he said.