NEED POWER: When the power goes out, breathing machines and other equipment used to help premature babies will also stop working. Here Ayman Abou Chamalah stands with his daughter Mecca in a Rafah hospital on 23 October. Photo: MAI YAGHI / AFP
The UN estimates that 50,000 pregnant women are trapped in Gaza. They do not get access to the health care they should have, when hospitals are out of business because of the war.
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The UN estimates that 50,000 pregnant women are trapped in Gaza without access to routine health care. They state that almost one in six pregnant women will on average experience complications in connection with pregnancy and childbirth. The war causes a lack of pain-relieving treatment, a greater risk of infections. Often blood loss cannot be replaced. The hospitals are overcrowded, lacking fuel, medicine and medical equipment. Gaza’s Ministry of Health reports that 18 out of 35 hospitals are out of service due to damage from bombardment or lack of fuel. Show more
Every day, around 180 women give birth in war-torn Gaza. The number is slightly higher than here in Norway, where there are an average of 140 who give birth per day, according to the report SSB.
In the coming month, there are therefore more than 5,000 women who will give birth to children in Gaza, write FN. Now all the hospitals in the north of the Gaza Strip are out of service, according to the Hamas-run Ministry of Health.
This weekend it became known that the Shifa hospital, Gaza’s largest hospital, has also been subjected to several attacks and is surrounded by Israeli forces. The maternity department is among the departments that have been destroyed, writes FN.
Seven premature babies and 27 adult patients have died in the hospital, Hamas claims on Monday.
Pregnant women and their unborn children are at extra risk in Gaza now, says doctor and field worker for Doctors Without Borders, Morten Rostrup.
– If you go into labor suddenly, it will be difficult to get to a suitable place to give birth, because it is risky to move outside. And if you are nevertheless at a hospital, it is not certain that the doctors have the resources to help, says the doctor to VG.
IN DANGER OF LIFE: The photo from the Shifa hospital in Gaza shows newborns on Sunday 12 November who have been taken out of incubators due to a lack of electricity. VG does not know whether any of these babies have now died. Photo: OBTAINED BY REUTERS / Reuters / NTB
Cut off power to incubators
The hospitals in Gaza are overcrowded with injured, lack fuel for generators and do not have medicines and medical equipment.
Both BBC and the news agency Reuters has published pictures of tiny babies huddled together on a cot at Shifa Hospital after the incubators stopped working due to a power cut.
Around 40 premature babies were in incubators when the power went out. It is feared that several of these will die in the next hours and days, writes the UN agency OCHA.
The Israeli army says it has offered to help evacuate the babies to a “safer hospital”. But no hospital has the capacity to receive them, says director of the aid organization Medical Aid for Palestinians, Melanie Ward, to the BBC.
HIT: This pregnant woman’s baby was rescued by emergency caesarean section after she was hit in a bombing on 21 October. The woman died at the Kuwaiti Hospital in Rafah. Photo: SAID KHATIB / AFP
Gaza doctor: Maternity ward remodeled
In southern Gaza, some hospitals are still open, but conditions are very difficult. Doctor Khadily is at work at a hospital in the south of Gaza when VG receives messages from him.
– The maternity ward at the hospital has now been converted into an operating room for life-saving treatment and a ward for observation of hospitalized patients, writes the doctor to VG.
When the healthcare system is on its knees, you can disregard pain-relieving treatment, such as an epidural, says the Norwegian doctor Rostrup. The risk is also much greater for infections after birth, such as puerperal fever. Blood loss is not replaced, he says.
– You risk losing women, says Rostrup to VG.
RISK: As early as 24 October, health workers warned that over a hundred premature babies are at risk of dying as a result of Israel’s blockade, which prevents the introduction of fuel for power generators. Photo: AA/ABACA
Heartbreaking sight
Almost every sixth of the estimated 50,000 pregnant women will on average experience some form of complication in connection with the last part of pregnancy and birth, figures from FN.
These are extra exposed now, says the doctor.
– It can be breech birth, bleeding, premature births or twin births. We especially fear those who need a caesarean section for various reasons. It requires a surgical capacity, and without it, serious complications can occur, says the doctor.
In Gaza, health personnel face heartbreaking situations every day.
– I have witnessed a caesarean section in an attempt to save a baby from the womb of a mortally injured mother. Unfortunately, the baby did not survive either, writes doctor Khadily from Gaza to VG.
HUNGER: It is a struggle to get nutritious food in Gaza now. It can affect the fetus in the stomach of pregnant women. Photo: Hatem Ali / AP / NTBPublished:
Published: 13.11.23 at 18:06
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2023-11-13 17:06:24
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