This week Dr. Feroze Sidhwa described to the UN Security Council his experiences treating victims of Israeli air and drone strikes in Gaza:
In Gaza, I operated in hospitals without sterility, electricity or anesthetics. Surgeries took place on crowded and filthy floors. Children died not because their injuries were unsurvivable, but because we lacked blood, antibiotics and the most basic supplies that are readily available in any large hospital anywhere else in the world. I did not see or treat a single combatant during my 5 weeks in Gaza. My patients were 6-year-olds with shrapnel in their heart and bullets in their brains, and pregnant women whose pelvises had been obliterated and their fetuses cut into while still in the womb. Mothers sheltering in the hospital cooked bread on hot plates in the emergency department during mass casualty events as we dealt with the reign of fire and death falling around us everywhere.