GAZA CITY, Palestinian Territories — With bandages wrapped around his head and
body, Attia Al-Sawafiri was lying in the burns unit of a
Gaza hospital, waiting
for his first skin graft.
اضافة اعلان
The 50-year-old
Palestinian has suffered chemical burn injuries not as a result of cross-border
fighting, but while trying to unblock his drains — a common problem in the Gaza
Strip, where many people live in cramped housing with dilapidated
infrastructure.
The harsh living
conditions and unsafe energy supplies in the Palestinian enclave, blockaded by
Israel for 15 years, are contributing to the thousands of burn injuries
requiring treatment each year.
At Gaza City’s
Shifa hospital, Sawafiri recalled how he tried to clear the drains at home with
caustic soda and hot water.
Four-year-old Yasser Khila is accompanied by his mother Dina after a dressing was applied to his wounds from spilled hot stew, at a clinic run by the charity Doctors Without Borders in Gaza City on September 7, 2022.
But “then the
soda spread and burnt my head, my hands, and my legs”.
The plight of
Gaza’s burns patients is compounded by shortages of medical equipment and
supplies such as artificial skin.
A four-year-old
boy who dropped a lighter on spilled fuel, setting it ablaze, was calling
feebly for his mother as he was wheeled out of the operating theater at Shifa.
“We’ve performed
a lot of surgeries on this boy,” said Dr Jamal Al-Assar, a burns specialist at
the hospital, Gaza’s largest health center.
Attia Al-Sawafiri, a 50-year-old Palestinian who has suffered chemical burns while trying to unblock his drains, is treated by Doctor Jamal Al-Assar at Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City on September 6, 2022.
Medics, he said,
had to clean the child’s wounds and apply skin grafts in multiple stages
“because it’s not possible to do it all at once due to the lack of a skin
bank”.
Hazardous winters
Some cases appear linked to a sense of hopelessness felt by many in
Gaza, which has been under an Israeli-led blockade since 2007 when
Islamist group Hamas took power.
Israel’s
restrictions on Gaza’s 2.3 million people have crippled the economy and limited
the movement of people and goods.
Many injuries are the result of Gaza’s precarious power supply, including utility workers hit by power surges and children who touch unsafe outlets and appliances.
One of the
hospital’s patients was a 20-year-old man who survived a suicide attempt two
months ago in which he had doused himself in fuel and set it on fire.
He lay in bed
with a pained expression while holding aloft his bandaged arms.
Dr Medhat
Saidam, another burns expert, said his department is seeing an increasing
number of such suicide attempts, which are “linked to financial problems”.
Many injuries
are the result of Gaza’s precarious power supply, including utility workers hit
by power surges and children who touch unsafe outlets and appliances, said Dr
Assar.
A four-year-old boy who dropped a lighter on spilled fuel, is wheeled out of the operating theater by Doctor Jamal Al-Assar at Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City on September 6, 2022.
In the past,
Gaza had suffered “a catastrophe from candles” used for lighting during power
outages, with entire families being killed in fires, Saidam explained.
But the
electricity supply has become more stable and people rely less on unsafe
generators and candles.
This year Gaza
received an average of 12 hours of mains electricity daily, up from just seven
hours five years ago, according to UN data.
New dangers
still loom in the winter, Saidam said, when many people burn coal for heat.
“Casualties are
bigger than in the summer because they’re trying to stay warm.”
3D-printed face
masks
Burns injuries that occur in a split second can take months or years to
recover from, with specialist care needed to help the skin regrow and minimize
scarring.
Dr Abed al-Hamid
Qaradaya, head of physiotherapy at a Gaza City clinic run by the charity
Doctors Without Borders (MSF), said medics have struggled in the past to source
the equipment needed because “it’s expensive and hard to find on the local
market”.
His clinic was
also damaged by
Israeli air strikes during last year’s war with Palestinian
militants.
Dr Qaradaya
showed off a valuable piece of technology: a 3D printer now being used to help
patients with facial burns.
A Palestinian girl who has a burn injury, receives treatment at Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City on September 6, 2022.
Staff spend
hours scanning a patient’s face, then print a perfectly-fitting mask that helps
“protect the face from deformities and preserve ... its aesthetic shape from
before the burn,” he said.
MSF clinics
across Gaza treated more than 5,500 new burns patients last year, and more than
one-third of those patients were aged under five.
One of them,
four-year-old Yasser Khila, was whimpering as a dressing was applied to his
wounds from spilled hot stew.
Four-year-old Yasser Khila is comforted by his mother after a dressing was applied to his wounds from spilled hot stew, at a clinic run by the charity Doctors Without Borders in Gaza City on September 7, 2022.
While the boy
was being comforted with a lollipop, his mother, Dina, said the physical injury
has also had a mental impact on her child.
“He became very
sensitive about everything, and he wants me to always stay by his side.”
Back at Shifa hospital,
where the four-year-old boy was out of the theater and recovering under a sky
blue sheet, Assar said proudly, “with treatment and close follow-up, the child
is healing.”
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