This doctor takes us through a day at Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City

It was a disorderly shot at the Al-Shifa infirmary in Gaza metropolis on tues as Dr. Nada Abu Al-Rub walked through the halls tending to patients. 

One of them, a little boy, had his leg amputated and suffered from burns on his whole body after a strike went off near where he and his brother were walking. Al-Rub tended to his wounds and, with the last piece of gauze in the department and some salt water, cleaned and wrapped his burns. 

She said, at that point, the department had no gauze left at all. 

She walked down another hallway where steel beds — some without mattresses — lined the walls, with patients and their families waiting to be seen by one of the remaining medical staff at the hospital. 

Another patient, an older gentleman, had been at home when the building was bombed. Al-Rub says he came in with internal injuries including a shredded liver and a rectal injury. The fractured bones in his legs were being held together with steel spokes that stick out of his leg. 

Al-Rub is Australian, on a volunteer tour in Gaza with the Palestinian Australian New Zealand Medical Association. She started her month-long stint in the enclave in central Gaza and then moved to Gaza City where she says things are even worse than she could ever imagine.

"My brain still cannot realize what's happening, it's a horror movie… A terror movie," she said. "I've seen things here that I've never seen in my life before."

People are ‘waiting on turns just to die’: Australian doctor in Gaza

Medical staff in Gaza have worked around the clock to help victims of the war, many times while under siege and heavy bombardment at hospitals in the north, including Al-Shifa. Volunteer doctors and nurses from around the world have gone in to support their colleagues. 

But at Al-Shifa, Al-Rub doesn't just encounter patients. Many other people have taken refuge in the halls, lying on blankets or gathering chairs together, hoping the hospital will be a safe haven from the war. She says there isn't a corner of the building that is not filled with either a patient or a displaced person. 

The injuries she's seen are complex — most in this hospital involve the brain, she says — but for some patients, all she can offer is an attempt to stabilize them. 

"We transfuse blood as much as possible, put a tourniquet to save the limb, take them for a lobotomy to save whatever we can save," she said, though the hospital's CT scanner and MRI machine have both been destroyed.  

Al-Rub admits that, given the limited resources, she and her colleagues have had to make the difficult decision of prioritizing some patients over others. 

"As a doctor, you hate to leave patients to die but here the situation is different," she said. Doctors will take on cases that they determine have a better chance to survive. 

As Al-Rub walked out to the hospital courtyard, the sounds of buzzing drones filled the air. The adjacent buildings in the courtyard are completely blown out, burnt and surrounded by piles of rubble. 

"It's a horror scene," she said. 

Israel has consistently claimed that Hamas uses hospitals as bases for its fighters and as weapons depots to justify targeting them. Hamas has denied those claims. 

Earlier this week, two hospitals in Gaza City were taken out of service after Israel expanded its ground operation into the northern area of the strip. 

In January, Dr. Rik Peeperkorn, a representative of the World Health Organization (WHO) for the West Bank and Gaza told the UN Security Council the health-care system in the strip was "being systematically dismantled." 

The WHO has verified over 600 attacks on health-care facilities in Gaza since October 2023. 

As Al-Rub made her way back into the hospital she was instantly peppered with questions from various patients in the halls and stairwells, and eventually found herself back in the emergency ward. 

She grabbed a pair of unsterile gloves — she says this is better than no gloves at all for now — and tended to her next patient. 

Despite everything she's seen, she says she hopes peace will come soon and bring an end to the war. 

"Otherwise, I don't know how we'll be forgiven for what happened to all these people… It would be too late." 

Producer

---

---