EUR: Treating patients in Gaza was like working in hell: medics
15 Jan 2009 2:50 AM
OSLO, Jan 14 AFP - Treating patients in Gaza was like working in hell, said two Norwegian medics who were the only Western doctors in the war-torn Palestinian territory for the first 10 days of Israel's offensive.
"The reception area (in Shifa Hospital) was like a scene from Dante's Inferno," Mads Gilbert, a doctor, politician and pro-Palestinian campaigner who has attracted controversy, said of the day when Gaza's main vegetable market was bombed, on January 4.
"I thought: 'This is what hell must look like'. All the screaming, all the pain, all the despair, all the blood, all the torn-off body parts," he told AFP in an interview on Tuesday.
Gilbert, 61, and his colleague Erik Fosse recently returned to Oslo after being sent to Gaza by the Norwegian Aid Committee (NORWAC), a medical aid organisation active in south Lebanon, on December 31.
Looking gaunt and exhausted, the two medicine professors, who have often worked in conflict zones, said they were surprised that no Western journalists were allowed entry into the territory.
"That came as a surprise. I have never been in a war (zone) where there weren't a lot of journalists," said Fosse, 58, a cardiothoracic surgeon and leader of NORWAC.
"So we understood we would become witnesses to the events in Gaza. We did not really prepare for this. We did not bring a satellite phone and I didn't even bring my laptop," added Fosse.
While Gilbert was assisting in assessing patients' wounds in the hospital, Fosse was operating on patients.
"On the first day (the hospital) had 80 operations. They had 300 patients coming in, and more came in all the time (the next days)," said Fosse.
"There weren't enough operating rooms. There would be two patients in each operating room or they would be operated on in the corridors," he said.
"The staff is absolutely exhausted from the long working hours," added Gilbert.
"(After) two weeks of an ongoing mass disaster, they lack all types of equipment, they lack food, they lack electricity ... and it's cold in Gaza now," he said.
"Just in Shifa, the situation amounts to a very serious, large humanitarian disaster that is man-made," he added.
The pair has been accused by some of supporting radical movements, with Gilbert accused of faking a television report about the death of an 11-year-old boy.
Fosse said that NORWAC worked in the past in southern Lebanon with the Martyr Foundation, an organisation affiliated with the radical movement Hezbollah and that it now works with the Islamic Health Society, which is also affiliated with Hezbollah.
"If you want to do medical work (in south Lebanon) you cannot ignore Hezbollah or the Hezbollah-affiliated organisations," said Fosse.
Concerning the television report under fire, Gilbert said the allegation was "completely absurd".
