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"Vascular surgery is really a disease for older patients and I
would say I had never operated on anybody less than 16, and that
was the majority of patients that we did this time around,"
Shariq Sayeed, from Atlanta, Georgia, told Reuters in Cairo.
"Most were patients 13, 14, 15, 16 and 17 years of age. Mostly
shrapnel wounds, and that was something I have never dealt with,
that was something new."
In his stint at the European Hospital in Gaza, Sayeed said his
team would deal with 40-60 patients a day. The vast majority
were amputation cases.
"And unfortunately there is a very high incidence of infection
as well so once you have an amputation that doesn't heal, you
end of getting a higher amputation," he said.
Around 70 percent of the surgeries he performed were on injuries
caused by shrapnel, the rest mostly from blast injuries and
collapsing buildings.
Ismail Mehr, an anesthesiologist from New York State, who led
the Gaza mission, said the volunteer medics were "speechless at
what we saw" when they arrived in April in southern Gaza.
Mehr is chairman of IMANA Medical Relief, a program that focuses
on disaster medical relief and healthcare support and has
provided treatment to over 2.5 million patients in 34 countries
and counting.
He has been to Gaza several times in the past, but could not
imagine what he saw this time: "Truly everywhere I saw was
destruction in Khan Younis, not a single building standing."
Out of 36 hospitals that used to serve more than 2 million
residents, just 10 were somewhat functional by early April,
according to the World Health Organization.
Health facilities lacked medical supplies, equipment, staff, and
power supplies, Mehr said. His biggest fear now is an expected
Israeli assault into the southern city of Rafah, where half of
Gaza's 2.3 million people have sought shelter.
"I hope and I pray that Rafah is not attacked," he said. "The
health system will not be able to take care of that. It will be
a complete catastrophe."
(Reporting and writing by Nidal al-Mughrabi; Editing by Aidan
Lewis and Peter Graff)
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