‘Palestinian doctors would not have been able to handle a tumor this size,’ American specialist says after operating on 4-year-old boy at Gaza City’s Shifa Hospital. American doctors careful to stay away from politics, but one of them says regarding Israeli blockade, ‘It’s inhumane … to not allow them to even have basic medical care’
Doctors from the United States who rushed to the Gaza Strip to help the war wounded quickly learned that their challenge went beyond treating shrapnel injuries.
The eight American specialists found themselves operating on patients who had fallen victim to the 20-month-border closure that had crippled Gaza’s health care system even before Israel’s offensive against Gaza.
On Tuesday, the team removed a kidney tumor the size of a honeydew melon from a 4-year-old boy, Abdullah Shawwa, in a five-hour emergency surgery at Gaza City’s Shifa Hospital. The tumor was advanced and without quick intervention, Abdullah would likely have died, said Dr. Ismail Mehr, an anesthesiologist from Hornell, New York. Doctors in Gaza didn’t have the expertise to operate on him and Abdullah’s father had been unable to get him transferred quickly to Israel or Egypt.
Even after the surgery, Abdullah’s prognosis is uncertain. He’ll need followup treatment, including advanced chemotherapy or radiation, which are not available in Gaza. But it’s been difficult for Gaza patients to get out, ever since Israel and Egypt closed the borders in response to the violent Hamas takeover of the territory in June 2007.The closure also dealt a further blow to Gaza’s underdeveloped health care system, which lacks sophisticated equipment and key specialists. Hospitals often operate on generators because of disrupted power supplies, and spare parts for some machines are unavailable.